Tribal jewelry and artifacts are being ground into dust, turned over, looted when intact, and disappearing from humanity at an unprecedented pace, in our headlong rush to exploit every available resource out there. And the further we go out there, the less explored, and therefore more easily plundered before science has had an opportunity to sift and search in their careful ways to uncover secrets from the past. We have no idea of what we have lost, in various corners of our good earth, or what we will lose tomorrow.

While this is happening, we should be aware that at least when an ancient product is not being made any more, and they seem to be destroying much of it, a wise investment might be to begin a collection of some favorite item that you would enjoy having around. While it rises in value. Skip the line of huge buggy buyers at the discount stores, and find some net bid auction sites that would have your purchase become an investment, rather than junk you consumed, got bored with, and found all the other lead copies are at garage sales up and down the blocks.

Leave that to the block heads, see that you acquired wisely, in a theme that some rich buyer in a decade sees what you had seen. Only now, it may be rich Chinese buyer. Be inscrutable, you kowtow which is to bow low like Confious to the Emperor. He or she must now cut off your head or pay you too much. Whose investment was there right under our native feet, and you will wish you had bought more. Imagine a decade from now, the demand, the supply.

Whether in Wyoming or Alberta or Peru or Angola or Mongolia scientists and archeologists are trying to keep ahead of the machinery and extract bones or artifacts as the mining begins. Every heavy rainfall in desert areas often strips sand away and offer up another ancient artifact, natural or man made, that may have been buried and exposed over the eons. However, since the rise of China and India and lesser tigers in the past decades the demand rises each year, chasing supply to expand relentlessly.

And as the earth heats up, and we fill our homes with modern fakes, we need to slow back, slim back, go back and reflect on how less was more. Have some retirement hobby mantles of tribal artifacts that are going, going. Your grand children will marvel; your appraiser will admire your vision.