Scientifically we take much note of species within the natural world becoming extinct. We make a great commotion at the discovery within archaeology of some forgotten monument, people or treasure. We peer into history through artefacts and old preserved documents trying to piece together a coherent picture of life in a bygone age as instinctively we feel it has something to speak to our time. The Kondh people of Orissa, India for example and other such identities around the planet are right before us. We can learn and value them in the here and now or are we to read about them in some distant future looking back with the question “why did we look the other way?”. And let us not be so arrogant to think the current world order will persist indefinitely. Who is to say that centuries from now, in some new kind of humanity free of collective fear, suspicion and national interest, an archaeologist will not be looking back at us and asking, “what went wrong?.”

By Musa Askari