Raiders of the Lost Ark's opening sequence is a cinematic classic and a documentary on how to suck at archaeology. Indy dashes into priceless ruins with no data-recording equipment, and proceeds to destroy archaeological records of an entire civilization. Most archeologists are after information about ancient cultures and Indy's daring raid destroys an entire temple full of thousand year old machines that are still-functioning. He destroys them so that he can grab a bit of gold that weighs as much as a small rhinoceros's ball sack. That's like a scientist happening upon a working model of the Starship Enterprise, and smashing it up to get a good calculator.
"Oh man, I can play Doom on this!"
We have lots of gold, Indy! We have people and machines whose entire job is to make holes in mountains until gold comes out, and you're collapsing a priceless trove of ancient machinery to recover something we could dig up in 10 minutes. Most archaeologists consider themselves lucky to find all the shards of the same destroyed vase, because they'll be able to put it back together in only a few months. That pressure-plate-triggered arrow-launcher? That was worth more than the gold. That shouldn't be that difficult for Indy, an archeologist, to comprehend. Yet he destroys ruins so intact they're actively trying to protect themselves from him. In other words, they weren't ruins until he arrived.
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