Official News page 7

REAL LIFE NEWS: EBAY IS THE SAVIOR OF ANTIQUITIES

by Hazed

Sometimes things don't turn out how you expect them to. Sometimes, that's a good thing!

When eBay got popular, archeologists were worried that it would allow tomb-raiders and thieves to easily dispose of their illicit finds, and this in turn would encourage more people to go out and start looting so they could profit from the sale of antiquities.

But that hasn't happened. In fact, eBay has cut down on the tomb-raiders activities considerably. The reason is that it's given them an alternative way to make money: by flogging fakes on eBay!

According to an American professor of archeology, before the days of eBay and the internet, the chief buyers of dodgy artifacts were the wealthy and sophisticated. They knew what they were buying was illegal because the items really belonged in museums, but they didn't care. They also knew enough that they were hard to fool, and they paid top dollar for the stuff. This meant that genuine tomb-raiding, despite being an expensive and risky enterprise, was worth doing.

Now, though, there are millions of ignoramuses out there who are desperate to own a gen-yoo-ine antiquity and will buy any old tat on eBay, with no notion of whether they are being conned with a fake or not. Therefore, crooks can make far more money churning out copies of ancient vases, sacrificial knives and so on, than they can going out and stealing them from pyramids or catacombs.

What an unexpected consequence!

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