«Around archeology there are still thieves and cheats»



Archaeologist specializing in the Arab and Islamic world, doctoral student at the University of Leicester and author of 'History is not what it is', Mikel Herrán (1991, Zaragoza) moves like a fish to water on an informative YouTube channel in which he accumulates more than 130,000 subscribers and is known as @PutoMikel.

What is @PutoMikel coming to?

A friend spent the whole holy day calling me fucking Mikel, fucking Mikel, fucking Mikel... And fucking Mikel stayed. It was my at sign on Twitter, but I still didn't know it was going to be so successful. It is something that generates questions and censorship. It was an experiment that I freely chose and that has stayed with me, despite the problems it caused me at university.

How is the "disengagement" from the European Community experienced in the United Kingdom?

I am there by chance, because it was the place where I received a scholarship [Universidad de Leicester] and in the end this works with money. I live in England, but I come home as soon as I can since my research is about Al-Andalus. The Brexit thing is something that others will have to solve, even if the problems are for everyone.

And Johnson's lags?

My closest circle didn't like him before the latest scandals, but the only question is whether he will remain prime minister for much longer.

Does your book sound like a review of history?

Historical revisionism does not please all researchers, but it is necessary. Reviewing what happened in a battle, an event or a relevant phenomenon is not adulterating history, it is trying to find other perspectives that time has been able to skew. If there is good practice and the tools are appropriate, investigating these alternatives does not have to create any type of alarm.

He defends that "history should not be learned by heart" but, nevertheless, history has a memory, right?

This emotional relationship is inevitable and is present in our lives through the formulas that are followed to turn a historical episode into a television series, a novel or the script of a play. The past is something we can control, and even improve, but not forget. The fact that I want to know more about Columbus' voyages to America does not change the end of the story.

Doesn't the story end when you hand in an exam to the teacher?

No... Even if it's for entertainment, it's very important not to stay in the History classes that they taught you in high school to prepare for the selectivity... You have to go a little further and let yourself be surprised.

Does your high activity in social networks make you an archaeologist 3.0, 4.0 or 5.0?

I do not know the zero point in which I find myself [ríe] but it is evident that we researchers have serious problems in communicating what we are doing because we live locked up in our world. That is something I try to correct through YouTube. The dissonance between the knowledge that people accumulate and what we really do is great, but history, and never better said, is changing. It is necessary to encourage a lighter communication, devoid of those adornments that not everyone manages to understand, that reaches the general public.

Are you the closest thing there is to an Indiana Jones of social networks?

Yes, but without so much glamor and, above all, with fewer stolen objects and traps.

Is it hard to change, not the discourse but the academic chic, to adapt to the rules that dominate social networks?

The digital world has nothing to do with the fact of giving a class. In addition, in social networks there is an almost permanent interaction because even if I mark the topic to be debated, there is always someone who proposes others. A teacher has to fulfill a program and cannot allow himself the luxury of focusing on a subject that a student asks of him. I know that it may seem frivolous to many that a subscriber asks me why in the Middle Ages people did not take showers, but the answer you choose and how you connect it with history is not... Match rigor with curiosity of a person is another way to explain the story.

Are there many cheaters in the world of archaeology?

The traffic in antiquities is real and accelerates in those territories where some type of armed conflict is unleashed. From that moment on, items of extraordinary value mysteriously appear at Sotheby's and other auction houses. Despite the control exercised by these firms to prevent the trafficking of stolen artifacts, we find pieces that were stolen the other day and that, instead, they sneak them in as if they had been found in a deposit 80 or 90 years ago. Yes. Around archeology there are still thieves and cheats. The black market dominates the world, not only in this sector but in general. If an antique from Iraq arrives at an auction house but was looted in 1950 there is no legal basis to condemn the market movement that is about to close.

Is it like saying that whoever made the law cheated?

It's like trying to put doors on the field... These shenanigans will continue to be done with total impunity: art never loses value.



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