http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1369424/Jesuss-Crown-Thorns-goes-display-British-Museum.html
The British Museum has put on display a number of historical artifacts venerated in the past as sacred. These are interesting, strange, imaginative and sometimes gross little oddities and include the thorn thing described at the above link.
Such relics are often criticised for their obvious fraudulent nature such as the multiple miraculous preserved foreskin of the infant Christ relics in various churches all over Italy and the world. Yet such tragic objects do belong in a museum as they are historical artifacts and reveal the ignorance and cruelty of past humanity. Historians can ascertain that this horrific mutilation was practised in the Medieval era by dating the relics.
Chemical analysis frequently discredits the relics by carbon dating fabrics and materials to an inappropriate era. Also by providing scientific explanation for so called miraculous phenomena such as crying paintings. Religious paintings in which the Madonna or Saints are seen to weep -real- tears are due to paint chemistry. The white paint used in these paintings has higher fat content than the darker colours which have been applied ineptly by the artist or temperature changes have occurred so that the white paint used for the eyes has expanded more relative to the darker surrounding colours containing less fat content. The white paint then weeps down the painting particularly from the corners of the eyes where the boundary of the white occurs and where the dark coloured iris borders the white of the eye.
People wanted to present these objects as sacred so as to make money out of selling them and displaying them for religious tourism and local prestige. Believing in the authenticity of the objects allowed people to be conned. Religious authorities therefore had an interest in keeping people ignorant and preserving science for a clique of insiders confined in a religious paradigm.
Why people venerate objects is a wider question. The lower animals also collect, defend and assemble things. The Lyrebird is sometimes cited as an example of this as it collects blue objects for decoration. Dogs sometimes collect shoes as do humans beyond the point of usefulness.
Hoarding, saving and souveniring are a basic behaviour instinct seemingly and religious veneration springs from this. To rob us is of great satisfaction to our enemies. So that they may have our possessions is a motive for agression. Such hostile desire to possess includes bloodlust, cannibalism, human sacrifice and extended into the modern era, the human body materials industry.
The poor infants mutilated for the medieval foreskin collection in the Vatican were not the last to suffer such atrocity unfortunately as the mutilation still continues under the name of religion and for commercial reasons. Science while providing no real justification for a medically unjustifiable amputation of a body part is yet sometimes concurrently warped to fit a religious paradigm and facilitates the horror by providing false research evidence.
Objects and body parts treated as removable relics - Another detail for investigation of religion in the past and now.
