I want to do what Indiana Jones does, can you help?

Question

I am a young man in my early 20's and I am at the point in my life where I really need to choose a career path, I have always been into history and have always been fascinated with movies like Indiana Jones, National Treasure, The Sahara, and movies in that nature. I would love to travel around the world and reseach, dig, and explore ancient lands. So I guess my question is how do I get started in this? What would my college degree be in? Are there companies that actually do these kinds of things? Any information would be helpful, thanks for your time.

Answer 1

Perhaps a career in paleontology is what you mean...?

Here is some info:

As a high school student, Andy Knoll was an avid fossil collector, but it never occurred to him that he would someday become a paleontologist. Where he came from, a small town near Reading, Pa., bright teenagers aspired to careers in medicine, law and, in Knoll's case, engineering. But one day while sitting in his dorm room at Lehigh University, Knoll realized that he hated engineering and loved biology and geology. That's when it hit him: as a paleontologist he could indulge his passion for both.

That revelation marked the beginning of Knoll's lifelong fascination with one of the most mysterious episodes in the history of our planet: the sudden appearance some 540 million years ago of a wild profusion of multicelled animals. That event, known as the Cambrian Explosion, created the evolutionary dynamic that produced most of the species that subsequently populated the earth, from insects and fish to dinosaurs and humans. Given his background, Knoll was particularly interested in how geophysical and geochemical changes (caused by powerful tectonic forces) might have set the stage for everything that followed.

For more info... go here:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1000587,00.html

: ) Godd luck! : )

Answer 2

Try it before you decide! Many archaeological digs need volunteers and usually you can join them for as short or as long a time as you want. You will have to pay for your own expenses. You don't have to go to the ends of the earth either, there are many interesting digs going on inside the US ranging from American Indian sites to 19th century industrial. I realize it doesn't sound as exciting as Indiana Jones BUT you will get an idea of what real archaeology is all about and whether you will like it before you spend a ton of money on college classes.

The other advantage to volunteering is you get to meet the people already doing it. If you decide to go into archaeology these contacts can be very helpful in getting you hired, especially if you did a great job on their dig.

You can do an internet search for "archaeology volunteers" and get tons of information on digs. There might be one near you.

By the way.... These days, most archaeologists will tell you the LAST thing they want to find is gold and treasure. Why? Because it makes a dig way more complicated and dangerous. Once word of these finds gets out, they suddenly have a huge security problem from local theives trying to get onto their site to steal stuff, or the thieves try digging around at night to see if they can find something themselves and cause a lot of damage to the site. If a dig site has to hire armed guards that's a big expense they'd rather avoid.

Answer 3

Fictitiously, Indiana Jones held a PhD in Archeology. If I was to follow the path of Dr. Jones, I would major in Archeology and minor (or perhaps multiple major) in history and anthropology.

Now for the bummer part, and I do not mean this to sound condescending, it's not like what you see in the movies. You shouldn't expect to be dashing around in hidden temples dodging booby traps. Field research would take many months of digging, sometimes resulting in almost nothing.

If its the pursuit knowledge and the satisfaction of contributing new information to more accurately present a given culture or civilization in history. A byproduct would be artifacts that museums would be able to share with the world and accrue research grants, which could be sizable.

Answer 4

Indiana Jones is a fictitious fellow and, is in the mind of someone meant to enjoy, at a Saturday after noon theater.
These areas alone, going into them today would probably get him killed if he was lucky.

These other answers your getting here. By the time you finish your studies through colleges and, get all the degrees you'd need to be good enough to be recognized to be able to have the notoriety to travel the world, without being harassed due to importance, you'd be to old, after all the education you'd need, to do anything other then sit at a desk and study artifacts.

Go to school, get your degrees and go back to the class room and teach others what you know, that's the greatest gift you can give your fellow man, the gift of knowledge.