On Thursday, I was doomscrolling Twitter when I came across a tweet of a video from Engineered Labs of someone casually breaking a 3,000-year-old piece of pottery from the Indus Valley Civilization.
Among archeologists and historians, the Indus Valley Civilization is one of the cradles of civilization, one of multiple cradles where the core original civilizations arose independently from one another. The South Asian site of the Indus Valley Civilization, along with Egypt in the Nile Valley and Mesopotamia in the Fertile Crescent, seem to have developed separately.
I confirmed the video's authenticity by heading over to Engineered Labs’ TikTok, where I saw and saved the video for myself. The video is now deleted from their account, and the company insists it was just a gag. You can watch it after the jump, where I’ll also tell you why hoax or not, this matters.
Here’s the rage-inducing video, which thoughtfully notes that the piece of smashed pottery had survived 3,000 years:
Engineered Lab's website says they “design and manufacture products that we think would be awesome. We have a passion for product design, especially for innovative ideas that don't yet exist.” Two brothers, Tim and Cory Marriott, founded the Idaho company: One is described as a “scientist” and the other an “engineer.” In their “lab,” they say that they make their own products.
Their “awesome products” appear to be expensive bookshelf decor, best used as gifts for a target audience I struggle to define. I too love science and geeked out on the image of Milky Way’s black hole, but these things? They have different types of “handheld periodic tables,” T-shirts, and something called “personal museums.”
These personal museums are filled with artifact pieces ranging from fossils to pieces of Viking axes, Egyptian mummy beads, and last but not least, fragments of pottery. This raises the question of how they’re getting their hands on these artifacts, and what should we make of this video?
I asked Dr. J. Mark Kenoyer, an anthropology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in archaeology of the Indus Valley Civilization, about this video. Kenoyer said, “The pot that they broke appears to be one that is from the Nal culture in Baluchistan. This region has seen a lot of looting over the past 15 years, and the vessels are commonly available on the antique market,” making one wonder about Engineered Labs’ artifact procurement practices.
Kenoyer added: “Archaeologists would never break a vessel like that for studying the clay or the residue analysis. We have millions of pottery sherds already broken in the archaeological deposits and use those for our studies. […] It is sad to see that they just broke it so carelessly.”
The video would indicate that Engineered Labs is on the back end of a fertile black market of artifacts. Engineered Labs, it would seem, benefits from the theft of indigenous artifacts for their products aimed toward a presumably more affluent western market.
This black market is part of a long history of western nations taking part in the robbery of the history of other nations. There have been some recent initiatives to bring such artifacts back to their countries of origin—some through “theft,” as alleged in China, although taking back what is yours doesn’t quite sound like theft to me. Some African nations have been working hard to reclaim their artifacts as well, most recently with France returning looted artifacts to Benin.
I reached out to Engineered Labs for comment with no response. However, as of Friday, the company’s website now features this banner:
An offensive video was recently posted under an Engineered Labs social media account. The video was a hoax and it is extremely unfortunate it was ever posted. It was posted without our permission, but we take full blame for the misinformation it created.
In an email to BuzzFeed News, co-founder Tim Marriott attempted further damage control, noting that the smashed pottery was actually a replica.
In reference to the now-deleted TikTok, Marriott explained that the employee made the decision to incorrectly describe the replica as a 3,000-year-old artifact “to grab attention.”
“Obviously, we wouldn't break a pristine cultural artifact just for a TikTok video,” Marriott said in his email.
Yet Engineered Labs does sell artifacts in its “personal museums,” such as the “Heritage” one, which goes for $189.99.
The collection features fragments of items such as Egyptian mummy beads, a woolly mammoth tusk, and Mayan jade, which led to some assumptions from people online that the company was deliberately destroying items solely for the purpose of creating personal museums as advertised on its website.
Mariott said that while the company does indeed include items like the Indus Valley terracotta in some of its personal museums, which is what the replica in the viral TikTok appeared to be, the company would only sell fragments “that are already broken in small pieces” for the product.
The mentality that led to all of this fleeting internet drama—the idea that it was worth pretending to nonchalantly destroy a 3,000-year-old artifact for fun—is born from arrogance and ignorance found in those who see themselves as the height of human civilization. People who lack respect for the past, even their own, display this type of attitude. Historical artifacts are things to be respected and understood as they deepen our connection to our past on this planet. They’re not to be destroyed and fed to the present-day machine of capitalism and cute office decor.
As of this writing, Engineered Labs was being flooded with one-star reviews on various platforms.
This story was produced through the Daily Kos Emerging Fellows (DKEF) Program. Read more about DKEF (and meet the author, and other Emerging Fellows) here.