I don’t think so - how can anyone open the things if you don’t know whose they are? There’s already arguments they should be just let alone because sacred or something.
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Ah, right, and this. Who gets to decide who gets the thing. No one. Fate already decided that, the Galar-Yu Circle found it and it’s up to them to do whatever they want with them. Of course it would be prudent to invite the Ihumanoana Circle to study the artifacts and discuss what to do with them, as whatever is inside them, the Ihumanoana Circle is more likely to have a better understanding of. Last thing we need to do is fight amongst ourselves.
And, of course, if the contents are irrefutably culturally signifigant to the Brutor (i.e. the contents are not millennia old sand or something), they should be forwarded to them. Treat others like you want to be treated yourself, I’d be pissed if the Brutor were holding my clans cultural relics hostage, but as of right now, we don’t even know what we’re all yelling about.
Given the history of the area, I’d say the idea that the contents will be culturally significant to the Brutor is a non-issue. That’s who was living there at the time.
But also, rereading the article, there’s this:
Lead archaeologist Gesila Fraemar confirmed that her circle had earlier recovered a data manifest listing the location of the cache and contents of the ndokassi from a related site, but noted it had been heavily corrupted, most likely due to electromagnetic damage inflicted during an Amarr attack.
So there’s a list of the contents, albeit a corrupted one; but the team was able to decipher enough of it to find the correct location… so maybe we are the ones who don’t know what’s in it yet.
Says it was found beneath the fields of a farm outside Hukerenui township. On Huggar. Whose clan lives there at the moment ? They get to appoint someone to adjudicate things.
If the Brutor want to play the “It was ours before, therefore it’s ours now” card, then I’m pretty sure the Starkmanir and Nefantar get to play that card as well, which I don’t think is going to work out well for the Brutor. So they might want to cram it.
As to whose it is, well then.
The boxes. Well, whose boxes were they ? The Galar-Yu found something that gave the location and contents, did they ? So they’d know who buried the boxes, right ?
For all we know right now, the boxes were put there for safe keeping. Might not even have belonged to the Brutor Tribe. Say they belonged to the Krusual Tribe, and were put there for safety, due to a deal between some old Krusual and Brutor dudes.
Given that the boxes are like, super rare, especially intact ones, then it’s important for all of the people, not just the Tribe or Clan who the things belong to.
So, I’d say that it’d be best that the Galar-Yu spill the beans on what they think the contents are. And then the Tribes get to nominate someone to open a box. So, whoever is the rightful owner of the boxes due to clan or Tribe, they get to pick a box and open it, and their Tribe gets to keep the contents of that box. Then a different Tribe gets to pick a box and open it. And keep going until all the boxes are opened. Because there could be stuff in there that belongs rightfully to other people. Sebiestor things. Krusual things, even Starkmanir or Nefantar things, or maybe even Thukker stuff.
But well, I’m not an adjudicator. And right now, I don’t have any known interest in the contents of the boxes. So that’s just my opinion.
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Well, what I’m getting at is that arguably anything could be culturally signifigant, foodstuffs for example could tell of ancient diets, but what I meant with cultural signifigance is ancient iconography, literal knowledge, or generally items no one remembered existed, you know, stuff that belongs in a museum. A museum of the relevant people.
And above me was a very good point - contents aren’t necessarily Brutor derived just because they were found on what was ancestrally their land. Ancient Minmatar were a small star empire.
Yeah. Suppose the boxes are labelled “Stolen Vherokior Secret Sauce Recipes” and were hidden there by some Brutor supervillain way back. The Brutor saying the boxes are “rightfully theirs” would be comical in that instance.
The easiest answer is the Tribal Council. If all sides press the issue, I suppose they will have to get involved as they’re the best authority on the matter.
However there is a question of what is inside. The article mentions that these relics were designed for preservation of biological matter. If it is, as Tenyhr says, stuffed with food and other archaeologically significant but otherwise benign period perishables, it would probably be of inter-tribal interest. As such, it might be best that it end up in the hands of the Tribal Council itself. Certainly, if it tells a story common to all Matari people, it would probably be the best outcome.
What worries me is that they are biological storage units buried close together over a relatively broad area (or at least broad enough to have some survive an Amarr attack and the ravages of time). And we are not universally aware of all the tribal practices of the time. If, say, the Matari were practicing some manner of cremation or burial (not a full size coffin at a third of a meter square, but I do know of ancient peoples who buried partial or reduced remains in that fashion), then ownership becomes a fairly important and less universal question. The remains should be laid to rest, and it’s debatable whether the relics should even have been unearthed.
My point is that we can only speculate unless someone performs an examination. So, specifically, the Tribal Council should likely take some sort of jurisdictional command of this expedition until the relics must be examined. It should probably be their collective decision what to do with the relics after it is determined to whom they originally belonged, what they contain, and what their purpose was. Barring some strange occurrence like what I mentioned above, it should probably also belong to the Tribal Council thereafter for use between all of the tribes, the ndokassi being so rare and of universal cultural interest to all Matari.
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Nope. Jurisdiction to resolve the dispute has to be established before they can open the boxes up. After all, part of the dispute is who gets to open the boxes.
That’s ridiculous. These things would be in Brutor hands if not for the criminal actions of others. The Vherokior obviously aren’t engaging in criminal acts here, but that doesn’t give them clear title to the property of others, just because it was found in their closet.
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Debatable. I mean, obviously, if the day of darkness never happened, but since it did… Who knows if the Brutor would have ever found the cache if they owned the land today.
Additionally, I did say any stuff in them probably belongs to the Brutor, but as for the ndokassi themselves, finders keepers. I am advocating for co-operation here, though, so maybe ease off a bit on my case?
We are best off assuming at least ownership via the fact that the land was occupied by Brutor at the same time that the ndokassi have been dated to (based on the article).
But there are two different questions here. Who does it belong to? I’d gamble on the Brutor. Who has jurisdiction? Both the Brutor and the Vherokior. Maybe there’s an argument that somehow Starkmanir stuff wound up in there, but that’s going to open a gigantic can of worms that’s much better avoided.
And who should open the containers? That comes down to who can open them, in terms of experience and access to any necessary technologies; and that’s probably the Vherokior researchers themselves.
So yes, it’s all very muddy.
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The Hukerenui township should have jurisdiction. It was found in their territory.
Speaking as someone who is from a small, rural township: Asking the town to mediate the opening and delivery of artifacts most likely belonging to a lost Brutor tribe sounds like the stuff nightmares are made of.
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God has jurisdiction over everything, and God has given the Amarr Empire ownership over all the stars in the heavens, and so this artifact belongs to the Amarr Empire, along with all things Minmatar, including the Minmatar people themselves. Obviously.
Most people where I come from do not think in territorial rights. I mean, last time someone tried to claim jurisdiction based on borders over blood, we took a Fleet capital taskforce into Federal space.
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Which was ■■■■■■■ stupid.
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I don’t contest that. Just pointing that out as proof that such claims do not go down easily for many Matari.
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‘That’s ■■■■■■■ stupid’ really doesn’t seem to stop any capsuleers. I can’t see why it’d stop baseliners.
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I’d say let the Tribal Council open them and then decide what to do with the content, with representatives from Brutor and Vherokior.
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Something else I thought of, and I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me earlier.
Who did they have to ask for permission to start digging a big hole in the ground to begin with ?
I mean surely someone has to say “sure go ahead” before a bunch of muscly dudes show up with spades and start digging all over someone’s prize vegetables or something ?
This.
Any other course of action is just going to lead to (eventually) people hitting other people over the head.
Send it upstairs, let the chief’s sort it out, I mean thats what they are there for isn’t it?