To put it simply, the Geraptiku tomb daily was built on a really harmful premise that didn’t feel appropriate to still have on our site.

This daily was likely originally inspired by Treasure Hunting pop culture, which while fun on the surface has a dark underbelly, this idea of the noble treasure hunter recalls a long-running history of racism and looting from early Anthropology.

Early Anthropology, like is depicted by the Geraptiku tomb, was essentially government-supported looting and grave robbing, where “Anthropologists” or explorers from colonist nations would explore historical sites of other countries and take what they found for museums or private collections.

The depiction of the Geraptiku tomb as an ancient temple that holds hidden treasures directly references this culture of exploring ancient sites to effectively steal what was left inside, especially with the daily being called a tomb; the user is grave-robbing a historical site.

We did not want to continue to promote this ideal or to continue to glorify this culture of stealing from colonized nations for the benefit of the settler or outsider. Especially when so many colonized people are still fighting to have their cultural objects returned from institutions that stole them, like the British Museum or private collectors.

While this daily may seem charming and harmless, it’s important to understand that this idea of treasure hunting is based on a long continued history of colonialism and racism, and that it is still actively harming people. Geraptiku is placed on Mystery Island; which is still alive and active. Geraptiku is suggested to be an ancient site that the current culture of Mystery Island originated from; if this is a living culture, why are we stealing from them? What does it say that we think we can go to this island and loot for treasure in their historical sites?

So, we decided to replace the Geraptiku Tomb daily with a daily event that references the revival of cultural practices and after consulting with some professionals and discussing what would be an appropriate replacement we came up with Skritterball! Skritterball draws from the game Ulama. Ulama is a modern iteration of an ancient Mesoamerican sports game, while historically played for spiritual reasons, the modern version of Ulama is played to celebrate and help revive the precolonial Mesoamerican culture. It was determined this would be an appropriate way to replace something harmful with something that celebrates cultural revival for the cultures that Geraptiku and Mystery Island reference.

Right now the replacement is still a work in progress - but once it's complete you'll have a new daily to explore with all new prizes!