As I was thinking about how fun it would be to have a job where you solve puzzles in the world, it struct me that media never depicts archeology in a real light. My short search seemed to confirm my thoughts. Most ancient sites are not guarded by elaborate traps or secret riddles to get in. From what I’ve found there were some crossbows here and there. Some rare hidden rooms with a lot treasure, but again, no traps.
That we know of.
Yeah, maybe we should look into archeologists that never returned
Well the pyramids at Giza were said to be cursed. Turns out, it was just gross occupational safety violations, but the effect was largely the same. If you breathe a thousand year old pathogens, you’re going to get sick.
This is 100% survivorship bias
Eh, the terracotta emporer from China almost definitely has booby traps that are likely still functional after 2,000.
We don’t know, because the absolutely insane amount of open mercury in the tomb would have filled it with toxic gases, although it’s likely that wasn’t the intent.
But yeah, most “ancient” tombs were pillaged centuries ago. What little happens now is entirely black market and people probably die all the time.
I know Kim Kardashian took a booty selfie with a sarcophagus at the MET Gala a couple years ago, and one of the illegal tomb raiders recognized it. And because he never got his cut, he snitched to local authorities. So it still happens, we just don’t hear about the vast amount. Just the very careful government sanctioned ones.
I’m surprised there hasn’t been a modern day person that buried their fortune with them under puzzles and traps.
Tbf there’s that one tv show about that one island in canada or something that had buried treasure and a bunch of traps but then it turned out the treasure had already been found and they think a freed slave found it when he bought the island back in the day or something like that.
Admittedly I’ve only seen one episode, a friend who watched it filled in the details on where it went lol.
That’s what shell companies are for. Legally burry who owns the assets
Would that make lawyers modern day archeologists?
More like financial investigators, or whatever their official title is supposed to be.
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Probably meant forensic accountants. Tracking the people that we are least know to have plundered these places.
The reason we don’t have more mummies is that the aristocracy back in waiting w were literally eating them.
No, forensic lawyers and accountants who unpick it would be the archaeologists.
The ones with the traps succeeded in protecting their secrecy.
Do you work for big-ancient-temples? It sounds like you’re just setting me up so that I end up in a pit of snakes or buried in lava.
Close. I work for big-pit-snakes. Who do you think supplies the ancient temples?
You mean it isn’t the folks at trap-o-mart?
For fun, here’s a link to the 10,000-year clock, built by The Long Now Foundation. The level of modern engineering, and planning, that it takes to build a clock that will operate for 10,000 years is fascinating. When you stop to think about, say, the trope of a mechanism that will slide back a 20-ton rock door reliably after 2,000 years is quite ridiculous.
And then there are those secret doors where you pull a lever and the wall opens up on its own. What kind of mechanism would be reliable after all these years?
Be the change you wish to see in the world
Step 1. Have money.
Step 2. Hide the money
There are many extralegal ways to obtain money. I believe in you
Coincidentally, those ways also make you someone who would booby trap their newly acquired property
If it’s important enough for traps, it’s important enough to be hidden. They could just be hidden well enough
The real treasure were the traps we found along the way.
What do you mean “media”? As in movies?
What you’re describing about “getting in” to places and “treasure” is a little old school. In the before times archaeology wasn’t really a thing and “antiquarians” looted old temples and tombs and sites. Their objective was to take objects which had some value.
Archaeology’s primary motivation is to learn about places, the time they were active, and the people that were active in them. Obviously finding some beautiful object or treasure is exciting, but it’s so exceedingly rare that it’s not really a consideration.
I quite like watching time team. They have a great youtube channel now but it was a BBS series for many years. I feel like this is probably about as real a depiction of “archaeology” as you’re going to get. They brush dirt away with a tiny paint brush for days and get excited when they find a tiny shard of pottery because it confirms that people were active at the site in say, the 1300s instead of the 1600s as previously thought.
In the current era, archaeologists acknowledge that accessing ancient burials and similar sites is so destructive that there are instances where we know their probably is treasure and other wonders but decide to leave it. The most famous example is The Mausoleum of Qin Shi, protected by the Terracotta army. There are other similar examples.
+1 for Time Team. Such a cool show, taught me a ton. My inner monologue now slips into a Yorkshire accent when I think about flint knapping
Exactly, treasure hunters go for the golden objects, and while archeologists absolutely want such things, they relate to what is valued, adornment styles, and often religion, but archeologists are often just as excited, if not moreso, to find the trash pit
Movies, TV, comics, Video Games, books, etc. People in this thread have already named a few. But as you point out, archeology in reality is rarely what we see in mainstream entertainment.
Ah the Terracotta army was used in one of The Mummy movies.
Wait, Lara Croft is not real? I’m devastated.
I refuse to believe dinosaurs aren’t alive in some tropical oasis surrounded by an elaborate and abandoned cave system with a functioning works, high up on the Peruvian mountains!
You’re gonna have to explore meth houses for that.
This guy clearly never visited Genghis Khan’s tomb.
Technically there have been ruins and tombs with traps and riddles. Take a look at some of the info about the Curse of Tutankhamun’s Tomb alone, including stuff like an anthropologist named Field having his house burn down, then flood after its rebuiling (purportedly because he had accepted a mummified hand as a paperweight which came with a cursed bracelet attached).
Granted, there’s no Myst or Tomb Raider-style tomb puzzles unless you count translations of ancient dialects used by the original architects/artisans/scribes/etc., but a lot of death has been associated with burial sites/tombs, whether or not you attribute them to curses or long-dormant mould being disturbed and breathed in…
The “Curse of Tutankhamun”, are you for real 😂 that’s the dumbest shit right up there with Nostradamus’s propehcies and homeopathy.
You’re aware that you live in reality? As in no Harry Potter wizardry reality?
What about your mom though?
