This is the reason I don’t really care if some cuts their name into the pyramids or whatever. Given enough time it will be added to the sites history and seen as spectacular
How dare he write the crude, worthless “Stevie was here” right next to the historical artifact of “Claudious Aurelious has a huge cock”?!
tbf there are a LOT more tourists now, it’s important to stop them from defacing the whole damn thing. THEY AREN’T SPECIAL NOW, THEY’RE JUST NORMIES IN THE MIDDLE CLASS
Meanwhile europeans since the 12th century were stealing mummies from egypt to use their remains as “medicine” even the word ‘mummy’ derived from such practice.
Ughhhhh to expand on this awful bit of history: ‘mummia’ was the term for some common kinds of dark powdered resinous medicines, which someone later discovered you could wring out of preserved human remains. The term “mummified” means treated in a way that produces mummia, and thence arose the term mummy. It’s popularity as a medicine (words fail to describe my revulsion) led to the wide adoption of the term in popular culture to refer to someone who had been treated in such a way as a ‘mummy’, possibly due to a mistranslation (tho there’s scant evidence of that being the specific cause - it seems more likely it was a misunderstanding that two similar substances were not the same substance, and that they were primarily familiar with dead-human mummia because of the crusades. There’s… a lot of debate on the issue though)
Of course it’s unreasonable if 200 persons carve something into Arc de Triomphe. But one person here, one person there 🤷 700 years later people are gonna wonder of the story behind “get shrekt lmao”. I mean, Halvdan was just a normie mercenary at the time of carving.
It’s mostly down to volume - the Hagia Sophia is 1700 years old and there are a total of two runic inscriptions (the five more that are claimed are so faint as to be indistinguishable from regular wear and so broadly aren’t recognized since… well they’re probably just wear). In the modern day sites see in a day crowds that some wouldnt have seen in a decade, and deal with daily vandalism as a result. The damage would be catastropic if left unchecked.
It doesn’t even need to be malicious acts like Mummy unwrapping parties either: Most sites already struggle to handle the entirely incidental damage that comes with large crowds. Machu Pichu’s terraces are collapsing from the foot traffic, Venice is full of trash and it’s streets are often impassible due to cruise ship crowds, Mount Everest is covered in poop, Maya Bay had to be closed for years to let the ecosystem recover, the Maldives coral reefs have suffered extensive damage from boat anchors being dropped on them, the list is exhausting.
People just cause damage even without doing it intentionally, so we have to do everything we can to keep that damage to a minimum lest sites be utterly obliterated.
Machu Pichu’s terraces are collapsing from the foot traffic, Venice is full of trash and it’s streets are often impassible due to cruise ship crowds, Mount Everest is covered in poop, Maya Bay had to be closed for years to let the ecosystem recover, the Maldives coral reefs have suffered extensive damage from boat anchors being dropped on them, the list is exhausting.
I have been a tourist basically once : because my wife wanted to see italy/vatican city. I have been to about 7-9 countries (depends if you count countries I lived in for over a year, or for crossings) . Not only are they robbing themselves of authentic, surprising, unknown experiences, they are, as you point out, ruining existing places or going to places in a state of decay, to which they are contributing.
I travelled for pleasure, but it usually had a purpouse : visit friends I’ve met, see musicians I couldn’t elsewhere, get paperwork done, scope out possible migration targets. Some of those places were more touristic, but I wasn’t there to do that in particular.
I totally visited my own touristic location(s), or was taken there by my friends though; I took a photo outside of Menegroth thousand caves before it moved from new york (my friend made me go to times square), went to the old center of town in Lyon (I refuse to shut up about seeing secret chiefs 3 live at the best gig I have been to), I saw the little mermaid statue in Copenhagen (and gave 0 fucks, but I STILL bang on about the kartoffelkage)
My favourite thing to do in london is to get lost. I fucking love the underground.
ᛟᛈ᛫ᛁᛊ᛫ᚨ᛫ᛏᛟᚢᚱᛁᛊᛏ᛬
Haha totally.
Foreign visitors graffiti at Persepolis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_visitors_graffiti_at_Persepolis
