I love him. I idolize him. He is my ultimate hero. I became an archaeologist because I wanted to find the treasure and thwart the Nazis. Oh, and I wanted the girl. But then came the reality of the situation...archaeologists spend a lot of time in school all for the privilege of working for minimum wage and the occasional hot dog at the 7-11. Not too glamorous. It was after four years of college and two years working as a staff archaeologist at a Cultural Resource Management (CRM) firm that I discovered that Indiana Jones is a fraud. A big fat (well, okay, an aging well-conditioned) fraud. And here are five facts to prove it.
Archaeologists rarely fight Nazis
We'd be up to the challenge for sure (we're tough cookies), but most of our battles are against much milder foes. We generally battle brutal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) bureaucrats, deadly Central American mosquitoes and the occasional misguided environmentalist, but I have yet to jump out of a plane in the Himalayas, raft my way all the way to the Indian rainforest, or dodge a bullet from anyone named Helmut. One time, though, I did fall while scaling a barbed wire fence. I'm in discussion with Universal Pictures for the film rights.
Most of the treasures we find are not booby-trapped
This one was a tough pill to swallow for sure. I mean I had expected blow darts, bloody spikes and large rolling boulders once we entered my first Anasazi pithouse, but all I got was two cubic tons of sand, one hibernating scorpion (don't for a minute think I wasn't suspicious) and a couple of earwigs guarding my treasure. Oh, and the treasure: a gorgeous little corncob. We partied that night.
Whip skills are not a prerequisite for any archeology program
Believe me, I checked it all out. I have yet to find an undergraduate program that offers Whip Skills 101. Now, I understand it may be an advanced skill that only Masters students or Doctoral students get to practice, but I have yet to see it any curriculum. How is this possible? The whip is an essential tool for Indy. When I was 15 years old, I got a classic calfskin whip with the understanding that any self-respecting archaeologist would need one. Nope! Yet to use it at all.
No treasure maps
In general, archaeologists read maps rather adeptly, so it would be nice to have a treasure map that we could try to decipher, but apparently Indiana, that Nicholas Cage character, and Cortez have them all. I once thought I saw some rock art that looked like a treasure map, but when I got to the X that marked the spot, I found two Gila monsters sipping on a Corona Light.The hat does not make you Indiana Jones cool
We have tried. I guarantee that should you walk on to any college campus in this great land and find the Anthropology/Archaeology department, you will find a certain cadre of students donning the hat. You be the judge, but I will bet that same group of derelicts could probably tell you the paste, temper, slip and form of every piece of pottery found in a five state radius. Not exactly show-stopping conversation at the Friday night keggers.
Oh, I almost forgot about the girl. Yep, we get the girl in the end. She usually wears Birkenstocks, eats hemp, and knows the measurements of condensed milk cans from the 1920s, but she's all ours.
