I have noticed a peculiarity in entertainment media, specifically ones that have to do with grave robbing, treasure hunting, and pseudoarchaeology. The most prominent of these media franchises includes the Indiana Jones franchise, the Mummy franchise, the Tomb Raider franchise, the National Treasure franchise, and the most recent Uncharted video game franchise.
In every one of these media franchises there are puzzles left by ancient people. These puzzles come in all shapes in sizes. Some make use of gigantic statues and others are much smaller such as puzzle boxes. And there are many of these puzzles scattered around for the characters of these movies and video games to solve.
I find it somewhat demeaning to the ancient cultures of the Maya, the Aztec and of Cambodia, Tibet, Nepal, and so on to suggest that their main purpose of existence was to build these elaborate puzzles so that they could entertain white archaeologists and grave robbers centuries later.
Also, in some of these franchises the descendants of the ancient peoples exist, but they are shown to be ignorant of the treasures left by their ancestors. It is suggestive that only a western educated person could possibly be able to read the maps to lead them to the hidden treasure.
But, then again the complex mechanisms that are shown to exist in the puzzles does give some praise to the intelligence of the ancient peoples. And the riches that are eventually reached indicate that these civilizations were once wealthy and powerful in their own times. So, I guess a balance is maintained.
