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Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by JoeAltmaier on Sunday December 06, 2015 @06:24AM (#10684981)
Huh. How can gold, silver and emeralds taken from South America, be “national cultural patrimony” of Spain? Aren't they a treasure of the South American natives they were taken from?
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by akavel on Sunday December 06, 2015 @08:45AM (#10685237)
The text of the article currently seems to talk about Colombia's “national cultural patrimony” -- I couldn't find much about Spain; was it edited? was the earlier text quoting Spain?
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by JoeAltmaier on Sunday December 06, 2015 @10:26AM (#10685439)
Thanks, I stand corrected. New policy: I should read twice, then say nothing. I'll sound much smarter.
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by j_s on Monday December 07, 2015 @12:17PM (#10690806)
No! Don't let one mistake get you down... this site is not much more than its participants (not the spectators), that's what makes it special.
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by RobertoG on Sunday December 06, 2015 @06:33AM (#10684992)
did you read the article?

It says nothing about Spain asking anything.

Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by jorgon on Sunday December 06, 2015 @07:09AM (#10685052)
It is Spanish cultural patrimony in the same way Rosseta Stone is British patrimony. Legally it is owned by Spain.
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by rockyleal on Sunday December 06, 2015 @10:30AM (#10685459)
Legally? Going by whose laws? The legitimate owners of all that wealth are the indigenous inhabitants of the territory it was extracted from by invaders. According to indigenous law, it is definitively NOT legally owned by Spain.
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by golergka on Sunday December 06, 2015 @12:14PM (#10685768)
> indigenous law

Are you referring to some particular legal entity here, or just an overall concept?

Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by justinator on Sunday December 06, 2015 @01:16PM (#10685987)
I agree with you (somewhat).

In other cases, Spain has won the rights over salvaged treasure from sunken Spanish ships, as the countries they plundered the gold from weren't countries at the time, but colonies of Spain (for example: Peru).

Sincerely, if this is in International waters, you would think there was a expiry date of shipwrecks and it's finders-keepers after, Oh, I dunno, a few hundred years or so.

Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by ZenoArrow on Sunday December 06, 2015 @08:56AM (#10685259)
I'm British and I don't believe the Rosetta Stone belongs to Britain. However, that's probably a minority view, many people here in Britain are still brainwashed about the glory of empire and all the good it did for the world.
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by andrepd on Sunday December 06, 2015 @10:23AM (#10685435)
The same could be said about every historical artifact not in display in its native nation. Should we repatriate all artifacts and pieces of art to its original nation?
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by ZenoArrow on Sunday December 06, 2015 @11:09AM (#10685564)
In an ideal world, yes, for historical artifacts.

However, I realise there's not much demand for such a move, so it's not going to happen any time soon, if at all.

Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by jorgon on Sunday December 06, 2015 @11:36AM (#10685627)
There's no demand for moving Parthenon Sculptures?
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by RobertoG on Sunday December 06, 2015 @07:51AM (#10685140)
I doubt that, legally, a shipwreck of colonial times in Colombian waters is owned by Spain.

And I would like to think that most of the Spaniards agree with that.

Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by joeyspn on Sunday December 06, 2015 @08:35AM (#10685212)
Well, technically Colombia was then part of the Spanish Empire, and that galleon belongs to the Spanish Crown. I personally don't mind but knowing how low gold is in the spanish central bank, probably the spanish gov will make some kind of move to get back its "historical heritage"...
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by rockyleal on Sunday December 06, 2015 @10:22AM (#10685429)
Empire which was revoked due to being an illegitimate and genocidal regime. Your argument suggests they should be allowed to re-steal now what they would have stolen back then.
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by joeyspn on Sunday December 06, 2015 @11:05AM (#10685551)
No, I'm not saying that they should be allowed to re-steal. I said that I don't care about a shipwreck, but the spanish government has been known to claim this kind of finds in the past because technically that is a Spanish ship and legal precedents exist.

Also, all the global empires have been built on the same coercive foundation, and that doesn't make them "regimes".

Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by jorgon on Sunday December 06, 2015 @11:35AM (#10685624)
Some American talking about genocide... That's really a joke!
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by joeyspn on Sunday December 06, 2015 @12:57PM (#10685915)
The reduction of the North American Indian population from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900 represents a"vast genocide", the most sustained on record.

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/7302

Well, it looks like there was, in fact, a vast genocide. In the north and also the south americas. Really sad...

Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by rockyleal on Sunday December 06, 2015 @09:04PM (#10687678)
Who said I am American?
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by maxerickson on Sunday December 06, 2015 @10:41AM (#10685486)
I guess the details aren't the same, but Spain has asserted legal rights over shipwrecks in the past:

http://www.tulanemaritimejournal.org/finders-weepers-losers-...

Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by Htsthbjig on Sunday December 06, 2015 @06:38AM (#10685001)
Is not Spain. It is from Colombia.

Are you from North America? Canada or US? Because following the same rules you state the land in which you live is not yours, but from the native Indians you exterminated before.

Or in a more recent example, ISIS would be the rightfully owners of the modern day gold, oil, that is under their territory the US wants to steal from them.

Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by MikeNomad on Sunday December 06, 2015 @09:46AM (#10685355)
Genocide is the word you are looking for, not exterminate. Besides, why stop with ownership by modern, Native American indians? Genetic ties have been established through Anzick boy to people near Siberia.
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by mahouse on Sunday December 06, 2015 @07:21AM (#10685078)
I wonder what would be of current Colombia without the Spanish people that conquered it.
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by personlurking on Sunday December 06, 2015 @08:55AM (#10685257)
My guess is it would be similar to what it is today, specifically in that the diverse landscape, including the three Andean mountain ranges that run through it, helped isolate regional Colombian cultures (and in isolation they grew stronger). Meaning we'd have a regional, culturally-diverse landscape, with Muisca, Carib, Wayuu and other peoples spread out through the land.

As for it being mostly monolingual under the imagined circumstance, I can't say, but it's possible Gran Colombia (current-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, etc.) would have naturally formed and, under it, a monolingual pidgin.

Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by pjmlp on Sunday December 06, 2015 @07:44AM (#10685124)
We probably would know more about the Aztecs and Maya cultures
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by user_0001 on Sunday December 06, 2015 @08:51AM (#10685248)
None of those peoples come from modern day Colombia.

Aztecs - Mexico Maya - Guatemala and neighbouring countries.

Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by pjmlp on Sunday December 06, 2015 @11:45AM (#10685669)
My point is that we have to thank the old Spanish and Portuguese empires for their role in extinguishing South American cultures.
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by saool on Sunday December 06, 2015 @12:11PM (#10685758)
Your point is that you feel queasy about how brutal life was back then and you wanted to throw some shade to feel better about your obviously better moral standards, and in doing so you missed the shot in the map by thousands of miles.

Here's some reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend

Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by pjmlp on Sunday December 06, 2015 @02:07PM (#10686168)
I come from a little place in the Iberian peninsula...

As someone that loves to study history, read old mediaeval documents, I know pretty well what our ancestors did.

Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by saool on Monday December 07, 2015 @09:20PM (#10694363)
As do I, and that's why I understand the whole "generational white guilt" spiel, cause I hear it often. Even an educated person such as yourself will be quick to jump the gun.

I get it, condemning their actions gives you the higher moral ground, you feel like a mensch and somehow detach you from whatever shared responsibility you think you shoulder.

IMHO, we can't judge old-day actions with current-day ethics. The same way we don't generally allow ex post facto law, we should be careful to deliver ex post facto moral judgement. If there's a place for moral relativism, it is probably when comparing different times in history.

That is not to say I excuse everything that was done during the colonial times —there are plenty of recollections of senseless atrocities— but there's definitely a tendency to look at all this in a reductionistic and emotional way that I don't think is fair.

Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by gus_massa on Sunday December 06, 2015 @07:51AM (#10685142)
I think the Incas were closer. It could have become a clashing point between both empires.
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by joeyspn on Sunday December 06, 2015 @08:38AM (#10685220)
The same could be applied to Apaches, Comanches, Navajos, etc ...
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by rockyleal on Sunday December 06, 2015 @10:28AM (#10685448)
Me too. It would be cleaner, unpolluted, less bloody, and the native cultures would probably be blossoming and making interesting stuff by combining their knowledge with outside influences. Too bad most of them were exterminated and dispossessed (the galleon being just one instance of that dispossession), and too bad they continue to be institutionally and structurally marginalised, decimated, and dispossessed.
Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by golergka on Sunday December 06, 2015 @12:20PM (#10685798)
Why?

The spaniards have been better prepared for war and overcame the local population in bloody conquest — this is a historical fact that no one will argue with.

How, from this fact, do people come to an assumption that local population had higher moral values than invading spaniards?

Have you completely no idea what pre-columbian era indian cultures were like? I mean, not today's "New Age" versions that have been adopted for Californian yappies, but actual kingdoms, chiefdoms and empires that resided there several hundred years ago.

Re:Spanish galleon may contain biggest treasure haul ever fo... by karmapolice on Monday December 07, 2015 @02:22AM (#10688302)
In fact, most of the army Hernán Cortés used to overcome the Aztec empire were natives that hated the oppressive power of the aztecs. He managed to exploit these regional feuds, and also internal problems of the Aztec government.

The spaniards alone were a skeleton crew, not enough to conquest anything that big, despite having better technology.