alt Hacker News> I for one don't even know why there's a forgery market for ancient pottery
People have paid top dollar for archeological artifacts for centuries. Humanity lost a lot of knowledge from graverobbers, illegal artifact hunting and unreported thefts of stuff getting exposed after stuff like forest fires.
> Humanity lost a lot of knowledge from graverobbers […]
Don’t forget the major scale destruction wrought by wars (religious and otherwise) - eg in the Middle East.
You might also want to count cultural theft. (Where are the gates of Babylon now??)