Lost El Dorado. Figure of ruler of the Muisca, bringing gold offerings to the Gods on Lake Guatavita. Photo from the collection of Salomón Koppel and his wife, Bogotá, around 1880. The figure was bought by Adolf Bastian and disappeared in a warehouse fire in Bremen. Museo Nacional de Colombia.

Beware of your Greenlandic dreams. Ruins of Medieval Church at Qaqortukulooq, in one of the Scandinavian settlements. After hundreds of years in Greenland, the settlements died out in the 15th century, for unknown reasons.

Finally, history, in new relationship with justice and ignoring time. 8

More subduing, now in the Vactican. 7

History – or German scholarship – subdued time, reconstructing the past from the remains. 6

More salvaging. 5

The relationship turned sour. Time destroyed the remains of the past. History’s helpers salvaged the remains from time. 4

More (and more explicit) revealing. 3

More revealing, with moral lessons for youth. 2

Time and history. The story of an abusive relationship in 8 parts. Once time and history worked together revealing the past. 1

Cultures boxed-in and removed from history. Map of “African Tribal Art”, divided according to the “One Tribe, One Style” principle. Produced for conference at Indiana University, September 28-30, 1961.

A philosophy of history for an industrial age. The Three-Age System - Stone, Bronze, and Iron Age - at the World Fair in Paris in 1889. (Picture from the Danish National Museum).

For those who are in Copenhagen (and know Danish), on 25/11, I will give a lecture on ethnographic storage under the British Museum and how it reshaped the view of African history. The event will be in the inner city. People working in the storage in 1962.

In 1786, captain Antonio del Rio visited the Mayan city of Palenque and convinced himself that the ancient Romans, Greeks, or Phoenicians had visited. Among the evidence sent to Madrid was this stela from the throne of King Pakal. What did he see that I don’t?

‘At the root of the march of progress in the West,’ the Japanese scholar Kume Kunitake noted, ‘is a profound love of antiquity.’ I am currently working on a book, trying to explain this odd passion (and modernist conviction). The Egyptian Room at the British Museum, visited by Kume in 1872.