Source: Firefly The topic covers real-life treasure hunting adventures. Illustrate scenes from ancient raide
X marks the spot! A very famous phrase which has made its rounds across children’s and even adult’s literature, ‘x marks the spot’ has become an ingredient used in every treasure hunt story written. Stories of this genre get gobbled up as soon as they hit the stores- who doesn’t like reading about a brave adventurer risking his life, surviving traps, and fighting villains to find the treasure? From the movie series The Mummy to the famous anime One Piece, treasure hunting stories are present in every format today.
But what of the real-life format? As in real-life treasure hunters who raced with each other, looked for clues, got involved in actual fights, and then, reached their goal. Or did not. Real life doesn’t have any plot armor so there is no guarantee for a good ending XD.
History
Treasure hunting can be traced back to ancient civilizations when raiders and armies used to go after gemstones, money, and other considerably valuable things. Archaeologists today have found many hidden (and/or possibly stolen) treasures which have survived the passage of time to get to us. But this was way back into the past.
Hunting treasure became a proper activity way later in the Middle Ages. The golden age of piracy and treasure hunting has to be mentioned in this case. In the 17th and 18th centuries, pirates and treasure hunters attacked other ships and collected a big fortune for themselves. Blackbeard, Calico Jack, and Anne Bonny are one of the most famous names out there, and are known for the treasure of “La Concorde”, treasure hidden in the Caribbean, and that of Captain William Kidd, respectively.
Some time later, treasure hunters started looking for ancient civilizations and cities which many thought were lost. The city of Atlantis is extremely well-known amongst people as a lost city, along with other cities like El Dorado and Angkor Wat. They also looked for treasure in shipwrecks.
E. Lee Spence
E. Lee Spence is a shipwreck historian and underwater archaeologist who has a 60-year career in treasure hunting. Living as an adventurer rather than a normal historian has become easy for Spence. He has been stabbed twice and even, shot once for the sake of his research and treasure hunting.
At the age of 12, Spence had discovered five different shipwrecks along with old coins when he was scuba diving using the scuba gear, he had designed on his own. This triggered his interest and he got addicted to treasure hunting. He started spending his time with his friends looking for hidden treasure in wrecked ships and found over 100 million dollars’ worth of artifacts.
He also discovered the H.L. Hunley in the 1970s, which was the first submarine in history to sink the enemy ‘s ship, but unfortunately lost it in a legal battle in the 90s.
Giovanni Battista
The pioneer of Egyptian archaeology, Giovanni Battista was an Italian explorer who used to look for hidden, old artifacts to study. He began his work by excavating tombs in Egypt in 1817 and rifled through these tombs in such a way that he only looked for what he considered the most valuable. The rest was disregarded. Some of the things he had ‘excavated’ are a giant Ramses II sculpture’s head, the sarcophagus of Seti I, and treasure from the temples of Elephantine and Edfu.
He is best known for being the first person to venture inside the pyramid of Khafre situated in Gaza, the second biggest pyramid at Gaza.
Sir Walter Raleigh
Sir Walter Raleigh is part of the list of ‘notable but failed treasure hunters’ who was in search of El Dorado, the golden city. He certainly wasn’t the first one to do so, and most definitely isn’t the last.
According to National Geographic, Raleigh had searched for this city in two expeditions in Guiana. He didn’t find anything any of the two times and got too old by the time he could go on a second trip. So, he sent his son. But luck, obviously, wasn’t on their side and his son, Watt Raleigh died because of a brawl with the Spanish. The one who survived the brawl to give this news to Raleigh killed himself. When Raleigh went back to England, he got beheaded on the orders of King James because he had fought with the Spanish.
Heinrich Schliemann
Often credited as the founder of ancient Greek Archaeology, Schliemann was passionate about ancient Greek stories but wasn’t sure about what he was really doing. He discovered the city of Troy and the graves of Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, and Mycenae and all the while, didn’t care about where he was digging- what mattered was his reputation and how he could boost it.
Money is necessary for a living though and Schliemann wasn’t an exclusion either. He had also found the mythical Priam’s treasure and gold at Troy which he had to sell for his living.
Resources
- James, Hellen. (2023, August 5). The History of Treasure Hunting: A Look Back in Time | Unified Treasure. Unified Treasure. https://unifiedtreasure.com/the-history-of-treasure-hunting-a-look-back-in-time/
- Exploring the Quests for Historical Treasures: From Sunken Ships to Buried Artifacts and Legendary Riches – WeChronicle. (2023, June 7). WeChronicle – We Chronicle the Human Story. https://wechronicle.com/adventuring/exploring-the-quests-for-historical-treasures-from-sunken-ships-to-buried-artifacts-and-legendary-riches/
- Vrchoticky, N. (2020, July 30). The Most Notable Treasure Hunters In History. Grunge; Grunge. https://www.grunge.com/231646/the-most-notable-treasure-hunters-in-history/
- E. Lee SPENCE | Doctor of Marine Histories (underwater archaeology) | Research profile. (2024). ResearchGate; ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/E-Lee-Spence
