Treasure Hunts

Throughout modern history, the idea of the treasure hunt has always fascinated. The idea that wealthy rulers and pirates had hidden their hoards and then died without revealing the whereabouts of their treasure, has driven thousands of people to go hunting for this 'buried treasure', with varying degrees of success. Indeed, it was the idea of the treasure hunt that led Robert Loius Stevenson to write his successful book Treasure Island. Another book that was famously based on a treasure hunt was Tolkein's Hobbit, in which a bunch of Dwarves and a hobbit went to plunder the treasure hoard of a dragon.

Taken from the Wikipedia ...

In recent times, the early stages of the development of archaeology included a significant aspect of treasure hunt; Heinrich Schliemann's excavations at Troy, and later at Mycenae, both turned up significant finds of golden artifacts. Early work in Egyptology also included a similar motive.

More recently, most serious treasure hunters have started working underwater,[citation needed] 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 most developed countries.

Additionally with the advent of affordable, state of the art satellite imaging from companies such as GlobeXplorer, GeoEye and others, the average income household can now contact a satellite imaging company and pay to have a specified area scanned. In fact, even companies such as Google with their Google Maps and Google Earth products, have given the ability to virtually anyone to have eyes across the globe and conduct research into specific points of interest before launching a treasure hunting expedition. This has made it infinitely easier for treasure hunters to do extensive research previously impossible to do without physically going to the specific point of interest, and saved the real life treasure hunters much time and money, even providing for a new level of safety to be incorporated in to treasure hunting expeditions.

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Corporate Treasure Hunts

The idea of the treasure hunt started to be come a popular office party type of activity during the 1970s and 1980s. It was a social event that was usually organised by a couple of willing volunteers. Generally, the office treasure hunt was a evening driving event, with the participants teaming up and visiting villages in the locality. The clues were simply based on on observations of signs, house names, road names etc and the treasure hunters ended up in a country pub for a drink and a buffet. The only treasure were the answers to the clues and the bottle of wine as a prize for the winners, plus an evening in the company of your colleagues.

There is nothing wrong with that type of treasure hunt but gradually it dawned on management teams and corporate entertainment organisers that the treasure hunt could be used as an effective form of corporate entertainment or for team building and it suddenly became big business. The nature of the treasure hunt had to change though. It needed to become more sophisticated. Contemporary corporate treasure hunts develop the use of many skills that are extremely useful in the corporate environment. They are also great fun so that the participants do not realise that team building is taking place, the phrase 'team building by stealth' is at the heart of this type of corporate event.

But the treasure hunt can, and is, used simply for corporate pleasure, as a pure corporate entertainment event. However, team building will still take place so it can give a shrewd manager the chance to carry out a team bonding exercise whilst disguising it as a staff reward. It can also be used as a conference break, a short energiser event that can refresh delegates at an intense corporate conference. Corporate treasure hunts can be organised to be on foot walking events or be motorised such as by car, taxi or public transport! The skills needed to succeed are planning, organisation, lateral thinking, negotiating and persuasion and the whole event will bond the members through a vommon aim in a fun competitive event.

Below are a few web sites that offer corporate treasure hunts:

Hunt for Treasure - Treasure Hunts in a venue of your choice or use their already prepared hunts

A Winning Team - corporate events including treasure hunts and archery

London Treasure Hunt - exactly as billed, ready made corporate treasure hunts in London, including Canary Wharf and the Jack the Ripper treasure hunt round Whitechapel

Irish treasure hunts in Dublin and Belfast

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