Wednesday, April 09, 2014

Poverty Point and Palestine

A couple of years ago I had the good fortune to visit Poverty Point. I was blown away by place. I'm a big fan of archaeology in the Near East, and never was that interested in archaeology in the Americas. But the amount of work that went in to engineering the bird shaped mound 3000 years ago was inspiring. Lately Poverty Point has been in the news. It's nominated to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is a very cool thing. The nomination will be voted on in June. But, UNESCO recognized Palestine as a country and then the United States quit paying membership dues to UNESCO. Also I hear The Alamo is nominated and in the same predicament. The thing is that Senator Mary Landrieu inserted the World Heritage dues of $700,000 in an appropriations bill but the House deleted it. It seems the Republican Party does not want Landrieu to get credit for this and thus get some votes from the residents of Northeast Louisiana.