What do you take with you when you have to leave fast?

I have just finished reading an extraordinary article. https://www.npr.org/2018/12/22/675628119/what-they-took-with-them-as-they-fled-conflicts

Maya Kara wears gold coin earrings. Her mother took the coins when their family left Hungary after the Hungarian Revolution in 1956.

Courtesy of Maya Kara

I don't want to give you all the details of this story, 

but if you are an archaeologist,  you should read this article.  It tells the story of many different people and what they took with them when the left "the old country."

From a personal example, when I came to Israel in 1991, I had a suitcase and three carry ons.  One of them had two clarinets, and some music books, but I forgot the music stand. My sister wouldn't let me go back and get it.  Too bad, the other things were normal, clothes, shoes, and a sleeping bag.  

( I hated sleeping in that sleeping bag. . . )  And everything else I had to leave with my sister.  She had my car, and the detritus of 29 years I think that she threw everything out, but I don't want to ask her, I would get upset all over again.

But this article makes me think about how and what people take with them when they leave. It is the important things, and the things that are less important are left behind.  So why do we make such a big thing about what we find when people leave?  Because that is the evidence that we have. Does that make archaeology not valid anymore?  Not necessarily, it just makes me think that people are more complicated that what we have considered in the past. 

I don't think that human nature has changed that much. Yes even in 30,000 years we have the same emotions and wants and needs.  We in 2019 just live much faster. 

Rachael Alice Orbach