10 Real-Life Archaeologists More Badass Than Indiana Jones

6. Tudor Parfitt Tracks Down The Ark, Keeps His Face

He wore a leather hat for a while. He uncovered the lost Ark Of The Covenant (or at least, something a lot like it). He travelled the globe, exploring the unexplored corners of the globe. He has a stupid name. The one thing that Tudor Parfitt doesn't have in common with Indiana Jones, in fact? He's British. Still, he's an adventurer and archaeologist that lectures at an American university (Florida), and he's real. One up on Indy right there. Formerly a professor of Jewish Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, Parfitt has undertaken any number of research trips which have seen him discovering one of the lost Jewish tribes that had migrated to Africa, visited the previously cannibalistic Gogodala tribe in Papua New Guinea and €“ oh yeah €“ the Ark thing. Rather than discovering the remains of the potentially apocryphal container for the Ten Commandments in Egypt, as in Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Parfitt tracked it down to a storage shelf in a museum in Zimbabwe €“ meaning it had something with that aforementioned Jewish-African tribe. He never carried a whip, but otherwise? He's a real-life, still-living Dr Jones.