It's probably safe to say that the Indiana Jones franchise takes a few liberties when
it comes to historical accuracy.
Funnily enough, however, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas actually based a surprising
amount of their movies around real history.
Here are some of the things the Indy movies get right.
Even die-hard fans of the Indiana Jones films will admit that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
wasn't all that great.
"You're a… a teacher?"
"Part time."
Set in the 1950s, the film follows an aging Indiana Jones as he battles Soviet agents
who are trying to lay claim to an ancient crystal skull.
But with past movies featuring historically and spiritually meaningful objects like the
Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail, centering this one around a crystal skull seemed a bit
of a hokey choice.
But Crystal skulls are actually a real historical phenomenon — though scientists and historians
are dubious about their provenance.
Nonetheless, some examples of crystal skulls are believed to be thousands of years old,
and certain historians believe that some of the crystal skulls found in museums around
the world date back to the Aztec Empire, at the very least.
Some admittedly less-than-reputable figures theorize that they could even have connections
with the lost continent of Atlantis.
Mostly, though, it's believed that crystal skulls were made in the 19th century and sold
to gullible tourists.
But hey, at least Kingdom of the Crystal Skull got one thing down: the prop skull used in
the film is so accurate, the producers were sued by the director of the Institute of Archaeology
of Belize — because it is an exact copy of a skull that was stolen from Belize years
before.
Watching the Indiana Jones films, you might get the idea that the Nazis had some kind
of obsession with archaeology.
And, bizarrely enough, they did.
The Nazis were big on the idea that geographical locations were linked to ethnic groups and
the culture those groups developed.
They saw archaeology as a way to buttress their theory that the German race was descended
from a pure "Nordic" race that they claimed had historically occupied a vast area of Europe.
These theories even formed the basis of the Third Reich's spurious claim over the rest
of the continent.
Many of these efforts were led by Heinrich Himmler, who had no scientific training and
believed strongly in the occult.
He hoped to use archaeology as a way to prove that their mythical "German" civilization
had existed long before other cultures, thus proving its innate superiority.
Meanwhile, Hitler sent teams of archaeologists into the countries he conquered to attempt
to prove that Germans had lived there long ago, in the vain hope of justifying those
very conquests.
Let's face it: Indiana Jones is a fantastic character.
He's everything you want in an action hero, but he's got that well-read charm to him,
too.
In fact, Indy's exploits are so darn cool that, according to National Geographic, there's
been a spike in public interest in archaeology as a career due to his movies.
Of course, the real work of an archaeologist usually isn't nearly as adventurous as Indiana
Jones'.
Ancient tombs are never actually booby-trapped, and archaeologists don't tend to have to gun
down their rivals in the field.
In fact, most archaeological work is actually done far away from the field, and mostly involves
cataloging, processing and analyzing what they find.
Still, that doesn't mean that Indiana Jones himself is a total invention.
The truth is, he closely resembles a real-life legend in the field of exploration: Roy Chapman
Andrews.
Born in 1884, Andrews moved to New York after high school and took a job at the American
Museum of Natural History.
It wasn't long before he was in the field.
Andrews himself claimed that he died almost 10 times during his adventures, including
almost drowning during a typhoon, being charged by a dying whale, set upon by wild dogs, attacked
by fanatical priests, fending off bandits, and being bitten by snakes.
And sure, he never faced off against the Nazis, and it doesn't seem like he ever found the
Ark of the Covenant, but still — if you want a real life Indiana Jones, Andrews is
about as close as you're ever going to get.
A lot has changed since the first Indiana Jones movies were released, and ironically,
one of the aspects of archaeology that those films portrayed most accurately has since
become their most controversial aspect.
"That cross is an important artifact.
It belongs in a museum."
This iconic line sums up the franchise's attitude towards archaeology — specifically, the
fact that Jones is basically stealing priceless treasures from poor, underdeveloped countries.
The idea that these cultural treasures belong in a museum thousands of miles away from their
home is offered as an obvious and widely-accepted truth.
It's certainly true that Western archaeologists routinely stole precious artifacts from foreign
countries; that's why museums in London and New York are stuffed with treasures from around
the world.
In this sense, there were hundreds of Indys throughout history, and even though most of
them didn't use a bullwhip and a revolver, they certainly stole plenty of riches along
the way.
Times have changed, of course, and this aspect of the films has become increasingly controversial.
Today, Indiana Jones wouldn't be considered a dashing hero of the world of archaeology
— he would be considered a looter, and little else.
In Temple of Doom, Indy stumbles onto a Thuggee cult that's kidnapping local children.
As part of their rituals, the leader of this cult rips beating hearts from his victims'
chests in service of their god.
You know, the usual stuff.
But this does have some basis in truth — sort of.
The Thuggees were a real group that existed in 19th century India.
In fact, it's from them that we get the word "thug".
However, the actual Thuggees were more of an organized group of thieves and murderers
than a religious cult.
They purportedly used deceit and charm to fall in with travelers, then waited until
night fell, strangled everybody, then robbed them.
The real Thuggee threat inspired a whole bunch of unreal stories, and this is where the notion
of the Kali Cult stuff comes into play.
These stories grew wilder over time, and soon the Thuggees were thought of as super-powered
cultists protected by local rajahs.
Eventually, the British brought in a man named William Sleeman to wipe out the Thuggees.
By the time Indy would have arrived in India, these gangs were long gone.
In recent years, however, contemporary scholarship has taken a different view towards the Thuggees.
Now, some historians believe that the Thuggee phenomenon was a form of mass panic whipped
up by the British as a way to better control the Indian subcontinent.
In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy stumbles upon a massive archaeological excavation in
the ancient Egyptian city of Tanis.
The Nazis have been there for months, searching for the location of the Ark of the Covenant,
but only Indy has the crucial clue to its hiding spot.
The German excavation is immense, employing hundreds of local laborers and tons of Nazi
equipment.
And Tanis is a real place.
In the film, it is said to have vanished after a cataclysmic, even Biblical sandstorm.
The reality, however, is a little different.
Tanis was located on a tributary of the Nile River that offered tremendous natural resources
and geographical advantages — but the course of the river shifted, the area silted up and
became a desert, and slowly Tanis fell into decline.
For centuries, it was forgotten entirely, making it seem like a "vanished" city.
The filmmakers obviously drew inspiration from the story of Tanis — but took some
storytelling liberties with it, too.
Still, when it comes to the excavation itself, the movie gets the Tanis dig absolutely correct.
The work depicted in the film is more or less exactly how those kinds of big digs would
be run at the time, and modern archaeologists have noted just how similar the Raiders dig
looks to actual excavations that took place in the early 20th century.
The Indiana Jones movies tend to stretch the historical truth when it suits them, but Kingdom
of the Crystal Skull takes the most liberties of all.
Hence all the aliens.
Combined with the crystal skulls, Cate Blanchett's Russian accent, and whatever the heck Shia
LaBeouf is supposed to be doing, it all gets rather silly.
One thing that the film got right, however, was how easily someone's career could be destroyed
by even a hint of communist sympathy.
The most historically accurate moment in the movie is when Indy loses his job having been
suspected of associating with communist agents.
"You have no idea the pressure coming from the board of regents.
The FBI showed up this morning, ransacked your office, searched all your files."
After all, the film is set in 1957.
While the baleful influence of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his House Un-American Activities
Committee was on the decline by that point, it was still a very dangerous time to be suspected
of communist sympathies.
As such, many people were fired from their jobs simply for attending the wrong meetings,
or unknowingly associating with people who were considered insufficiently patriotic.
It was the Red Scare in full swing; something countless Americans besides Indy fell victim
to during the 1950s.
The Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade follows Indy as he races to find the Holy Grail.
Along the way, he encounters members of the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword, an ancient
group of knights dedicated to protecting and keeping the location of the Grail a secret.
While the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword didn't actually exist, they were based on
an ancient order of knights that were very real: The Knights Templar.
This secret order was founded in the early 12th century, and originally existed to protect
Christian pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land.
They were famous for their poverty, and lived entirely on donations from other Christians.
As their fame grew, however, the Pope conferred on them many privileges, including a blanket
exemption from taxes.
Notably, they were also rumored to be the guardians of the Holy Grail.
The Knights lost influence when Christian forces lost the Holy Land.
Their exemption from taxes made them targets, and in the early 14th century, they were brutally
suppressed by the King of France after they refused to make loans to him.
Rumors persist that they still exist, however, and that they still guard the Grail to this
day.
If you believe that sort of thing.
One of the most famous scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark involves Indy duking it out with
a German soldier while a BV-38 "flying wing" fighter plane slowly spins around them, its
deadly propellers coming closer and closer.
It's a fantastic scene, but even casual students of history probably realize that no such plane
ever actually existed.
And sure enough, the BV-38 was created for the film — but its design was actually taken
from real-life experimental planes that the German Luftwaffe actively developed during
World War II.
The most obvious source of inspiration for the "flying wing" is the Horten Ho 229.
Designed in 1943, its compact design promised incredible speed and maneuverability, and
the Third Reich committed a half of a million Reichsmarks to the project.
The 229 was plagued by problems, however, and never went into production.
The general idea behind these planes was also being pursued by the Allies — the United
States was the Vought V-173, affectionately known as the Flying Pancake.
The opening sequence to Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the most iconic scenes in cinema
history.
You know the one.
As Indy escapes the ancient tomb, he's chased through the jungle by a tribe of indigenous
warriors.
You might assume that both the tribe and the golden idol were invented for the movie, but
you'd only be half right.
The golden idol was indeed invented for the film, though it was based on a real Aztec
idol depicting the goddess Tlazolteotl, patron of midwives and adulterers.
The tribe chasing Indy actually existed, however, albeit a long time ago.
The script for Raiders calls them the Hovitos, and mentions that they're descended from a
tribe known as the Chachapoyas.
While the Hovitos are fictional, the Chachapoyas were very much real.
They lived in an area of modern-day Peru from the early 9th century, until they were destroyed
by the Incas in the late 15th century.
So sure, Raiders plays a little fast and loose with the truth — but all three films also
bring a slice of real history to Indy's fictional adventures.
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