Time Raider

Current mood: Timing out
Current music: 'A Thousand Years' by Sting

Move over Lara Croft - I have here a totally brand new concept that will change the world! Not Tomb Raider, but... Time Raider. How about becoming an adventurer who travels through time, collecting ancient artefacts before they actually become ancient? So, for example, you would be able to see what the Venus de Milo looked like before she was 'disarmed', or look upon the face of the Winged Victory of Samothrace before she lost her head. (By the way, both of these beautiful-but-broken Greek statues are currently on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris.) You could find the real Holy Grail, or marvel at all Seven Wonders of the Ancient World before they crumble to dust. Now wouldn't that be something?

Take it easy, miss - I only asked for the time!

Picture found on http://www.tombraiderchronicles.com

I'd like to hear what ya'll think. You'll probably tell me that it's been done umpteen times before - but if it hasn't, well then, you heard it here first! And a word of warning to software developers and film-makers: Don't you dare pinch my idea! (Ya got that, Mr Gates?) (Buying my idea, now - that is a possibility...)

Actually, if one really could time-travel and steal bits of history in the making, I can see a whole bunch of potential complications arising. For starters, no-one in this cynical world would believe that you've found the real thing. Take the Dead Sea scrolls, for instance. They're estimated to be around two thousand years old. Now, say you found the scrolls the day after they were hidden in the caves. If you bring these back to the 21st century and carbon-date them, you'll probably find that they're not very old. At least, their age would be significantly less than two thousand years - which would make what you hold in your hands an elaborate hoax. This wouldn't be true, of course, but if you keep insisting that it's the real McCoy and that you brought it back in a time machine, you'll soon be headed for the nuthouse.

You could solve the age problem by hiding your artefacts somewhere, but of course there isn't any guarantee that (1) they'll still be there when you come back several thousand years later, since someone else might have 'found' them before your return, and (2) they'll actually survive that long. However, this dilemma will look quite titchy compared to the big problem.

The big problem, which is rather fundamental, is this: If you take away a precious historical artefact at the time of its creation, then no-one in the future is going to know about it. You'll deprive the museums of the artefacts you acquired for yourself. Upon returning to the 'present', you'd find that museums are suddenly empty of all the items they held before you started mucking about with time, and would contain other objects of interest which everyone but you would know of. And then if you went on to steal those, the problem will repeat itself, over and over again. So here you'd be, proud to have found all these highly valuable antiques, only to realise that they aren't precious at all, and that technically, they aren't even antique. You sure wouldn't be able to sell off the loot for a quick profit.

I guess that while time-raiding might make a good premise for a game or a film or a book, it certainly isn't going to have much use in real life, more's the pity. And that's assuming you even have a time machine...