Submitted 5 hours ago by ApollosArrow@lemmy.world to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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.
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.
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.
Be the change you wish to see in the world
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.
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.
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.
You’re gonna have to explore meth houses for that.
Wait, Lara Croft is not real? I’m devastated.
This guy clearly never visited Genghis Khan’s tomb.
What about your mom though?
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.
slazer2au@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
That we know of.
markz@suppo.fi 5 hours ago
Yeah, maybe we should look into archeologists that never returned
Diddlydee@feddit.uk 5 hours ago
This is 100% survivorship bias
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
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
ApollosArrow@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
I’m surprised there hasn’t been a modern day person that buried their fortune with them under puzzles and traps.
slazer2au@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
That’s what shell companies are for. Legally burry who owns the assets
Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 4 hours ago
The ones with the traps succeeded in protecting their secrecy.