Petition update
Salviamo l'Uomo di Altamura
Sep 23, 2017 — "LET'S SAVE THE ALTAMURA MAN".
Article 9 of the Italian Constitution states: "The Republic promotes the development of Culture and technical research, it protects the landscape and the historical and artistic heritage of the Nation".
In the name of the research, can a State protected nature be altered and can its elements of a fossiliferous field be modified, in a karst environment, which is a single strtigraphic, that is the true essence of the asset to be protected?
That's what is happening in Altamura, in the province of Bari, where, in October 1993, in a karst cave, a very rare fossil field, known as "The Man of Altamura", was discovered.
This site got the Archaeological Bond, issued by a Decree of the General Director of the Ministry for Cultural and Environmental Heritage on November 1995, while the Environmental and Landscape Bond (declaration of considerable iterest) was issued by a Decree of the Ministry for Cultural and Environmental Heritage, on April, 4th, 1996, including the Lamalunga district.
Voices of a propedeutic research activities on the removal of the Lamalunga skull, or parts of the human skeleton from its natural location, are becoming more and more insistent.
This removal should be useful to complete the study on one of the most important archaeological findings in prehistory and to allow it to be put and shown in a museum.
Such fossil remains, found in a karst cave on the High Murgia, represent a geological and paleontological unicum of priceless cultural, environmental and scientific value.
This has allowed the application of this part of the Murgian territory to UNESCO World Heritage.
The research project "Rediscovering Altamura: advanced multidisciplinary investigations on the skeleton from the Lamalunga cave, Italy", financed in 2016 by the Ministry of University and Scientific Research (MIUR) as part of the call "PRIN 2015" will be developed and completed during the years 2017-2019 and provides for an irriversible alteration of the place, with destructive evidence on one of the most important paleontological sites in Italy.
We request information to the above mentioned Ministries, about the ongoing research activities and on the protection of the property, pointing out what permissions have been issued in order to carry out destructive tests on samples of fossil remains; what destructive tests have been carried out,and what are the supervisory actions, regardless of the research project, that control the authorized activities.
European Coordination "LET'S SAVE THE ALTAMURA MAN".
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