That we know of.
this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
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Yeah, maybe we should look into archeologists that never returned
This is 100% survivorship bias
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.
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.
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.
Have I got a book series for you! Forensic accountant uncovers layers of bullshit in silicon valley by none other than our own @pluralistic@mamot.fr
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No, forensic lawyers and accountants who unpick it would be the archaeologists.
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.
We have a modern version of the deadly temple:
Definitely not the kind of treasure people want to find later.
There was one! Look up Forrest Fenn - the podcast Cautionary Tales has a double feature about it (S6E44-45). True riddles, and treasure hunts, and some deaths despite no traps being set.
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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 also reminds me of the Oak Island supposed treasure in that pit.
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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?
Sticky piston.
Yeah, but that requires iron, redstone and slime.
Well the iron and slime I can get you, but the redstone I have struggled with for many years and I still do not possess any...
A large stone on a ramp, kept from rolling by a wedge, to be pushed out of position, by use of mechanical advantage through a lever, seems quite doable to me. You could even utilize a smaller initial stone to kick the wedge withholding a larger stone.
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Be the change you wish to see in the world
Step 1. Have 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
Step 2. Hide the money
Step 3. Think of riddles that can't be solved with a hammer.
Step 4. Build a massive underground structure with tunnels, caves, catacombs, lava, angry spiders and secret doors.
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?
If you're serious about your big pit trap you need to be buying your snakes directly from suppliers. Trap-o-mart charges at least 50% more for the same snakes and the benefits of building a relationship with your supplier are too great to ignore.
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.
There is one job that does what archeologist does in films: software engineers.
You have to decipher ancient languages, riddles, and have to avoid traps all the times.
Sure, you don't go into deep jungle, but you sometimes get to dive into the deep web to find traces of documentations to help resolve a specific case.
If your inline assembly is being rendered as ancient glyphs, please change your font.
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You're gonna have to explore meth houses for that.
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!
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
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.
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Lies. I saw that kid get carried off on a gurney, on Legends of the Hidden Temple.
They set up all those blowgun traps but forgot they didn't have the tech to actually make them blow just because a wooden lever was pulled.
Wasn't there a pharaoh that had so much mercury on the site that anyone that tried to dig his grave would get mercury poisoning?
I'm not sure about a pharaoh's tomb, but there were rivers of mercury in the tomb of the first Emperor of China; also automatic crossbow traps I believe. It's the tomb with the Terracotta Army. Extremely fascinating.
This guy clearly never visited Genghis Khan's tomb.
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