[JustinD]

Originally Posted by Prof

I'm glad someone brought finally brought this up. Regardless of whether you think the guy who spent $157 on it did so un/ethically, the macro ethics angle is very interesting to me.

Although the 'owners' would be long dead, it sure sounds like an extremely significant cultural relic that would be best to sell to/return to Gabon for display in a museum... especially since the article mentions that the French guy's relative was a freaking colonialist governor.



The couple claims this guy essentially stole the mask from them, and then they turned down 300k from the guy after the sale, presumably because they want all of the money for themselves.

Man, that's a startling amount of hypocrisy to me when your ancestor most likely took it himself as a spoil of oppressive colonialism.

If anyone deserves the money or mask, it'd be the people of Gabon.

Sounds like a bit of Gabonese karma finally swinging back to the family to me.

This chapter seems like a bit of a leap.

The mask is stated to be from the nineteenth century and used by a secret society that functioned until 1920, acquired by an 88 year old man's grandfather likely during the late 19th century. It's the obscurity of the origin and the materials causing value here, not age. It was likely damn near new when he received it.

Why to do we have to place an imaginary story of an oppressive Indiana Jones in a pith hat burning the village and children for their prized good luck charm when a more likely story was he probably bought it at a street market as souvenir junk at the time? Also, Gabon is easily one of the richest countries in Africa due to an incredible wealth of rare resources, it is not a bad place to be and rather lovely. If they felt in the slightest that they wanted the item, they could easily add a legal team that was outstanding...they don't give a flying f.

This is one of those rewrites in history that we love to do in modern times. Perhaps we don't assume the great evils of everyone and instead think progress would have never happened if not for the actions of the past, both good and bad.