Archeological white elephants
offered to Museo Nacional


The Brooklyn Museum is facing a storage problem, and officials there want to unload some of its inventory on Costa Rica, the country where it originated.

The desire to return some of the ceramics and stone artifacts to Costa Rica was reported in The New York Times, but  no one mentioned the growing problem of swelling museum collections.

The archeological material the Brooklyn Museum wishes to return came from Minor Keith, the man who built Costa Rica's Atlantic railway and pioneered banana plantations.

Most of the artifacts that came to the Brooklyn Museum in 1934 do not have what scientists value the most: a precise history and precise record of the point of discovery. These are the key elements that help researchers flesh out an ancient culture.

Of course, some pots, drinking vessels and grinding stones contain small fragments of what they contained or milled. This can be valuable to scientists. A study released over the weekend said that a close study of Neanderthal teeth gave evidence that the culture had a varied diet that was not restricted to just meat.

After discovering starch granules from plant food trapped in the dental calculus on 40,000-year-old teeth, the scientists said they believe that Neanderthals ate a wide variety of plants and included cooked grains as part of a more sophisticated, diverse diet similar to early modern humans. The researchers came from George Washington University and the Smithsonian Institution.

Some scientists had speculated that the Neanderthal became extinct because they suffered dietary deficiency, something that was contradicted by the new study.

Fortunately for researchers, they know exactly from where the ancient teeth originated, and future research might relate to the geography.

Not so with many of the stone balls that was the hallmark of prehistoric Costa Rica. After the balls began to be discovered in the 1940s many were transported as trophies to the gardens of upscale Costa Rican homes. There even is one on the lawn of the Corte Suprema de Justicia.

This makes archeologists wince. Says John Hoopes, the University of Kansas expert on Costa Rica's stone balls: "Whatever 'mystery' exists has more to do with loss of information due to the destruction of the balls and their archaeological contexts than lost continents, ancient astronauts, or transoceanic voyages."

Hoopes reports that when the first major study of the balls took place in the 1950s, at least 50 of the objects were in situ, in the place where the prehistoric makers left them. Today only a handful are untouched, he said.

The Museo Nacional in San José has a collection of such balls, but they are more like art objects instead of artifacts to be studied. If Central Valley residents all surrendered their stone balls the museum would be faced with a major storage problem of artifacts that would have minimal research value. A plan exists to move some of the balls to a proposed national park in Palmar Norte. The object would at least have tourist value.

That might not be the case with the Brooklyn Museum holdings. The New York museum plans to keep the best of the lot. The remainder likely would end up in the Museo Nacional's storage facilities in Pavas.

What is lacking is money to pack and ship the artifacts back to Costa Rica. There likely will be fund drives.  So far there has been no detailed assessment of what  actually is being surrendered and its value.

Police make arrests
in crimes against U.S. tourists


Police have detained suspects in two cases involving tourists.

The first was Friday in Cahuita de Talamanca where a crook stole a strongbox from a tourist cabin.

The second was in Jacó where Fuerza Pública officers quickly nabbed suspects in two robberies, including one involving U.S. citizens.

The Fuerza Pública said that quick action by business people led to the capture of the strongbox theft suspect.

Detained was a man with the last names of Bolaños Garvia.  Allan Muñoz, the regional chief of operations for the Policía Turistica in Limón, said that a thief broke into a building that had been rented by U.S. tourists on Playa Chiquita de Cocles in Cahuita. The crook entered by a window.

The strong box contained $1,600, passports, cell phones, an iPod and other objects of value, he said. Then the crook fled to the nearby mountains.

Local sources said that eight police officers responded and located a suspect. The suspect led police into the thick jungle where the safe was recovered.

In Jacó police learned that three men robbed a woman in the vicinity of a fried chicken outlet there Thursday. As police responded they received another report that U.S. tourists had been robbed in the vicinity of the municipal building, said José Luis Sandoval of the Fuerza Pública there.

The second caller had information on the type of vehicle the robbers used, and police saw a similar car, a white Hyundai, and stopped it. Three suspects were detained. They were identified by the last names of Brenes Montano, Marín Álvarez and Espinoza Juárez.

Improved border system
to be unveiled today


Security officials will be unveiling what they describe as a modern information system to speed up the exit and entrance of persons at the border with Nicaragua.

The event will be this morning at the Peñas Blancas offices of the Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería. No further information was given on the system, but that particular border crossing handles a flood of individuals.

The security ministry said that more than 118,000 Nicaraguans left the country to spend holidays in their home country. The bulk came back over the weekend or will come back in the early days of this week. Immigration and the Fuerza Pública have beefed up their presence at that border crossing to help control security.

Typically individuals who are illegal in Costa Rica try to reenter the country in an informal manner. They will have it tougher this year. Due to the border conflict with Nicaragua at the Isla Calero many border areas that had minimal police presence in past years are now teeming with officers.

In addition, security officials said they were using planes and boats with additional emphasis on the northern Caribbean where illegal immigrants usually just walk across the border unhindered.

U.N. increases its efforts
to provide aid to Colombia


The U.N. refugee agency is boosting its efforts to provide emergency assistance to thousands of Colombians affected by recent flooding that has been called the worst natural catastrophe in the country’s history by its leader.

According to government estimates, more than two million people have been affected by the floods, which resulted from the unusually heavy rainfall that has beset the South American nation since the middle of the year.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which runs an operation to assist more than three million people displaced by violence in Colombia, began distributing emergency aid in affected areas two weeks ago.

“We found people isolated in the hills, in places where the roads have been destroyed, and their children were hungry,” said Marlene Mesa, a high commission staff member who took part in an aid distribution in the area of Cantagallo, south of the province of Bolivar on the Caribbean Coast.

The agency noted that dozens of towns in the hard-hit north of the country remain under water. Thousands of people are living in shelters, and others have moved to less affected areas.

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