Brazil's most important historical museum was destroyed in a fire today. How does this impact historical study and the historical profession both in Brazil and abroad? Or about the preservation of historical artifacts in the Global South?
I guess it's a very open-ended question; I am just hoping for any insight from professionals or experts who can approach the subject from a more educated point of view. What was lost?
From an archival and linguistics standpoint, this is a significant loss. Entire languages were more or less eradicated overnight.
Full quote and translation as given by the Survey of California and other Indian Languages on Facebook:
"Pessoal, não salvou-se nada da Linguística. Perdemos todo o acervo de Línguas Indígenas: as gravações desde 1958, os cantos em muitas línguas sem falantes vivos, o arquivo Curt Nimuendaju: papéis, fotos, negativos, o mapa étnico-histórico-linguístico original com a localização de todas as etnias do Brasil, único registro que tinhamos datado de 1945. As referências etnológicas e arqueológicas das etnias do Brasil desde o Sec. XVI...Enfim, uma perda irreparável para nossa Memória Histórica. Está doendo demais ver tudo em cinzas."
[translation (ours): "Nothing was saved from Linguistics. We've lost everything in the Indigenous Languages Archive: the recordings from 1958 forward, the songs in many languages without living speakers, the collection of Curt Nimuendajú: papers, photos, negatives, the original ethno-historico-linguistic map with the locations of all of the ethnic groups in Brazil, the only record that we have from 1945. The ethnographic and archaeological records of the various ethnic groups of Brazil from the sixteenth century forward...In all, an irreparable loss for our historical memory. It hurts so much to see everything in ashes."]
I'm Brasilian and I'm a historian. I never had the honor to work there but losing that place felt like loosing a family member. It's gone, it's all gone my children, my grandchildren and so on will never see it.
We lost 20 Million Artefacts, including Ancient Roman paintings, Egyptian Mummies and 1/3 of all Pterodactyl fossils in the world. We lost the first scientific institution of our nation, we lost the Slavery Abolition Law, signed by Princess Isabel herself in 1888. I would trade the lives of anyone in my family to save the museum, that building is bigger than you or me, people come and go but museums are supposed to remain forever for future generations