It Belongs in a Museum

Indiana Jones completes his master thesis on long-lost civilizations

Indiana Jones crept through the ancient, crumbling temple, carefully watching where he placed each step. There on a stone pedestal before him was a golden idol with ruby eyes — the sacred object of a long-dead civilization. Soon, it was arm's length, and Indiana reached out and grabbed it. There was an ominous click, and the temple started shaking.

“Uh oh.”

Indiana ducked as poisoned darts flew out of the wall. He ran out of the chamber just before the door collapsed and leaped just as the floor below him began to crumble. He found solid ground but was nearly perforated as spears shot out of the wall. Indiana scrambled under them to the front room of the temple but found the door closed. There was an odd rushing sound, and he turned to see the room was filling with water. And snakes.

“Come on.”

---

Weary but happy to be home, Indiana stumbled into his office and tossed the golden idol on his desk as he collapsed in his chair. The dean appeared at his door. “There you are, Mr. Jones! You’re lucky you have tenure... the way you just disappear instead of teaching your classes.”

“I’m doing important research,” Indiana answered.

“What important research? Where are you—” The dean’s eyes fell upon the golden idol on Indiana’s desk. “Is that the sacred fertility idol? It was only rumored to exist.”

It took Indiana a moment to realize what the dean was talking about as he had forgotten about the idol while deep in his other thoughts. “Yeah, it is,” he finally answered. “But that’s not the point of my trip. The point was what I learned getting it. You see, I’ve spent decades recovering precious artifacts from dangerous locations, and I’m starting to put it all together. I’m working on a master thesis — the culmination of all my life’s work.”

“A master thesis? What about?”

“It’s an explanation about why so many great, ancient civilizations completely died out.”

The dean shrugged. “That’s interesting, I guess. But I’m glad you recovered that idol. It belongs in a museum.”

Indiana jumped to his feet. “Exactly! It does belong in a museum. But where was it?”

“Well, judging about how you usually go about these things, it was probably in some ancient, buried temple.”

“With elaborate traps!” Indiana said, thrusting his finger forward as if he was making a killer point.

“I guess I don’t follow,” stuttered the dean.

Indiana picked up a notebook and held it up to the dean. “I’ve combined my life of research in archeology with the research of other explorers — notably Lara Croft and Nathan Drake — and there is a very distinct pattern. We find these artifacts in crumbling temples filled with elaborate traps, and the civilizations are long, long dead. And why?”

The dean was still confused. “Why?”

Indiana smiled. “Because they had no museums.”

“I guess I still don’t get what museums have to do with it.”

“Think of it this way,” Indiana said. “When our society has a valuable artifact, what do we do with it?”

“Well... we put it in a museum.”

“Yes! Where everyone can see it, and we can even charge admission. But these ancient civilizations didn’t have museums, so what did they do with their valuable artifacts?”

“I guess they put them in temples,” the dean said.

“And spent years and years designing elaborate traps!” Indiana said, wild-eyed. “These civilizations were barely agrarian, but instead of working on their food supply or defense from other tribes, they put all their resources and tasked their best and brightest to design temples filled with complex traps. And they gained nothing from this. The only thing it maybe accomplished was to kill some hapless explorer hundreds of years later. In the meantime, no one can even enjoy their precious golden idol or whatnot because it’s in some temple no one can enter lest they get skewered with spikes or crushed with a boulder.”

“So you’re saying it’s the trap-filled temples that caused these civilizations to collapse?” the dean asked.

“Yes!” Indiana shouted. “These civilizations put half their resources into these death traps to absolutely no benefit. There was no way they could last long after building these things. But if instead they had a museum — a place where they could put the idol on display and maybe have a guard or two watching it — I think these civilizations would be around today.”

“Well, that’s quite a theory.”

“That’s backed by the evidence,” Indiana said. “Name one civilization that put an artifact in a trap-filled temple that’s still around today. A temple death trap is the last gasp before a civilization disappears.”

The dean looked again at the golden idol. “That should make quite a paper, but we should probably get this guy to a museum.” He thought for a moment. “You know, some people have been talking about how taking artifacts from other countries and putting them in our museums isn’t right.”

Indiana looked confused. “What?”

“Well, they think the artifacts belong in the country of origin.”

Indiana shook his head. “They didn’t own this.” He motioned to the idol. “They left it in a trapped-filled temple. If it were in a museum over there, I wouldn’t have taken it. I only take things from deadly temples. If you want to be part of a proper society, get a museum and don’t just leave your valuable things in crumbling temples. Get a museum!”

“Okay. Okay. I know how you like museums,” the dean said. “One more thing, you have an inordinate amount of expenses on whips.”

Indiana again looked confused. “How so?”

“Well, almost every month, you’re requesting replacement whips from the university. And most professors, well, they request no whips. It’s raising a lot of questions, and—”

“I have tenure.”

The dean nodded and left the office. “Yes, you have tenure.”