Many years ago I was traveling in Tunisia with a boyfriend who was (and still is) a paleoanthropologist. That's a fancy word for people who are interested in very ancient people, like Australopithecines and such.
Bill was in Tunisia looking for a new site that might contain human fossils. I was there to buy stuff and go to the beach.
We drove around a lot and every once in a while he'd stop the car, roll down the window and let in the suffocating heat, and stare at some hills.
He was checking out various layers of rock that jibed with early humans.
I would simply look down at my vintage Berber bracelet bought at the souk and think about the sign nailed to a tree at the beach that said "monokini interdit" knowing that I would would never anyway.
Bill's job would have been easier if he were an archaeologist and looking for more recent remants of human habitation because there are many telltale signs of the things we leave behind, like fallen down houses and burial mounds.
In fact, archaeologists at Harvard have recently been scouring photographs of the earth taken from outer space and detecting those remains. For example, looking at photographs of a small corner of Syria, Jason Ur pinpointed 9,000 possible sites. He sat at a desk and did this.
I guess that's progress, but really, no driving around in foreign lands? No buying other people's culture? No time at the beach? What's the point.