On Sunday night I came across one of those news stories that make my heart drop into my stomach. A fire broke out at the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro and destroyed around 20 million historical artifacts, including ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman artifacts, as well as important paleontology and natural history collections. Over the two centuries of its existence, the Museum had accumulated vast archives of our history and culture, representing the life’s work of hundreds of scientists and explorers. And now it’s all gone. All of it. Forever. Think about that for a moment. We can never recover those treasures, those time capsules of our past. Mércio Gomes, an anthropologist and former president of Brazil’s indigenous agency, Fundação Nacional do Índio (FUNAI), compared it to the loss of the library of Alexandria in 48 BC.
Employees, researchers, and academics ran to the scene of the fire, crying as they watched their life’s work and much of the history of their country go up in flames. Their pain is acute not only because of the irreparable loss, but also because the fire could have been prevented. No one knows how the fire started, but the government had cut funding which could have helped to upgrade the old building, which was built mostly of wood, had no sprinkler system, and could draw little water from nearby hydrants. You can sense their immense grief and anger in the quotes below:
“The museum was completely abandoned, left to rot by the disdain and carelessness of public authorities. I am in complete grief.” — Walter Neves, University of Sao Paulo
“It makes me inordinately sad to think of those millions of specimens and exhibits, the product of two hundred years of collection and the life’s work of so many hundreds of scientists and explorers, just going up in flame and turning to dust. It makes me want to cry.” — Stephen Brusatte, University of Edinburgh
“It’s another sad chapter in the dismantling of Brazilian science–one that affects not only the future of the country, but also its memory.” — Luiz Davidovich, UFRJ and Brazilian Academy of Sciences
“My feeling is of total dismay and immense anger.” — Luiz Duarte, National Museum of Brazil
“We Brazilians only have 500 years of history. Our National Museum was 200 years old, but that’s what we had, and what is lost forever.” — Mércio Gomes, FUNAI
References
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/fire-engulfs-brazil-national-museum-rio
https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/02/americas/brazil-national-museum-fire-intl/index.html