An excellent rumination on something that most of us take for granted. It's common now to assign the trait "adaptable" to humans when discussing the things that make them unique. I always think about ambition, instead: why else root through old tombs if there's not a big risk/reward calculation in place? And that ambition manifests as greed, knowledge, etc, most of the motivators if not the emotions that humans in fantasy fiction run through. That may just be my own darkly-tinted lens, or the fact that I prefer sword and sorcery to epic fantasy.
Ambition is definitely a good way to think about it. Humans are far more likely to go into the dark hole and try to pull the treasure out because they have the capacity to picture what their life would be like with that treasure.
An excellent rumination on something that most of us take for granted. It's common now to assign the trait "adaptable" to humans when discussing the things that make them unique. I always think about ambition, instead: why else root through old tombs if there's not a big risk/reward calculation in place? And that ambition manifests as greed, knowledge, etc, most of the motivators if not the emotions that humans in fantasy fiction run through. That may just be my own darkly-tinted lens, or the fact that I prefer sword and sorcery to epic fantasy.
Ambition is definitely a good way to think about it. Humans are far more likely to go into the dark hole and try to pull the treasure out because they have the capacity to picture what their life would be like with that treasure.