Stuff the British stole
Another walk another podcast. This excellent ABC series is about things in British museums which arguably were stolen and belong to another country. The best known example perhaps is the Elgin marbles, which Lord Elgin hacked off the Parthenon and sold to the British Government. There’s an ongoing campaign to get those back.
One story I particularly liked though is the story of the dodo skull and remains in the Oxford Museum of Natural History. It’s the only example in the world of dodo soft tissue. Dodos lived in Mauritius until the arrival of colonists drove them to extinction in seventy years. Until then dodos had no predators and they didn’t understand that people were dangerous. This one has bullets embedded in its skull.
We don’t know how this dodo got to Oxford, but evidently it could be argued that it was stolen from Mauritius and that Mauritius should have it back.
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