Rhea-Buried Treasure

Treasure Hunting in modern times

BURIED TREASURE

Searching for hidden treasure is a common theme in legend and fiction, but real-life treasure hunters exist, and seek lost wealth for a living.

A buried treasure is an important part of the popular beliefs surrounding pirates. According to popular conception, pirates often buried their stolen fortunes in remote places, intending to return for them later (often with the use of treasure maps).

More recently, most serious treasure hunters have started working underwater, where modern technology allows access to wrecks containing valuables which were previously inaccessible. Starting with the diving suit, and moving on through Scuba and later to ROVs, each new generation of technology has made more wrecks accessible. Many of these wrecks have resulted in the treasure salvage of many fascinating artifacts from Spanish treasure fleets as well as many others. Unfortunately, in their search for valuable artifacts, treasure hunters destroy forever unique archaeological sites. For this reason, treasure hunting is illegal or restricted in many countries.

A treasure map is a variation of a map to mark the location of buried treasure, a lost mine, a valuable secret or a hidden locale. More common in fiction than in reality, "pirate treasure maps" are often depicted in works of fiction as hand drawn and containing arcane clues for the characters to follow. Regardless of the term's literary use, anything that meets the criterion of a "map" that describes the location of a "treasure" could appropriately be called a "treasure map."