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>> If this knowledge is valuable, the best way to show a support for it is hiring somebody to work full time on this problem.

Best for whom?

I'm not sure it's best for the employer since they then live or die based on the abilities, insight and inspiration of that one employee.

Equally, I'm not sure it's best for the employee who becomes singularly focused on that one problem to the exclusion of all others. If they want to diverge down an alternate path for a bit they (likely) cannot.

Of course in one sense work-for-prize is not efficient. We may as well argue that FOSS programing is not efficient. But FOSS exists not because of effeciency, but because it allows people to scratch an itch (usually unpaid.)

Prizes allow specific goals to be prioritised within that community. Say, for example, an expert at ocean currents notices a prize for decoding a historical text. Sounds like a fun hobby. Figures out that it contains tide tables.

Employment is clearly a good thing. Scanning in old archives could easily be done by an employee. But there's a place in the world for more than just formal employment. The existence of prizes does not negate employment. Rather it might attract folk into a "hobby" of sorts.

In this situation, the employer doesn't live or die based on one skills of the employee. They understand that they're taking a risk.

"If this knowledge is valuable, the best way to show a support for it is hiring somebody to work full time on this problem."

Why not have both? I.e. academics and students dedicated to the fairly monastic career of being a professional historian (which I am), but also prizes which seek to bring in experts from other fields with different skillsets who may approach the problem in an original way.

Obviously there is a limited amount of funding for anything. But surely some of the billions being donated every year to the general funds of elite universities like Harvard would be better spent setting up specific, goal-oriented prizes modeled on the Vesuvius Challenge.

> "youngsters should work in science as volunteer with their parents money, so we don't need to pay for it"

Not far removed from "We don't pay anything to our interns at our Manhattan offices, because it's such a great opportunity for them (and not incidentally it keeps out the lower classes)".

Based on pay in archaeology and history, the knowledge evidently is not valuable in the slightest.

Despite the Indiana Jones fantasy, Archaeologists typically live in their cars or in tents, and historians in an unheated hovel. If you’re at the top of your field, you can earn £40k.

Both are fields I am sincerely interested in, and was as a kid, but would never in a million years dream of working in, because I like having shelter and shoes and teeth.

I think the ideal, in all fields, is to create a love of the field. Einstein wanted to be a physicist, but no university was interested in hiring him. So he went to work at a patent office, while continuing to pursue his love of physics. And that patent office is precisely where he would end up writing some of his most influential papers on a number of topics, including special relativity. In fact his paper on special relativity, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" offered exactly 0 academic references, but did cite his patent office coworker Michele Boso for assistance and suggestions.

So in modern times, are we creating a culture where people are going to be enamored by and intellectually curious about the past? Or one where people might have little interest in such or even regard it with disdain?

This solves the problem in two ways. The first is by creating people who will find a way to make things work, in spite of adversity. The other is by making your suggestion happen naturally. A person grows up with a love of history but, perhaps out of necessity, is unable to pursue it in earnest. However, they become successful in other fields, and then naturally choose to become a patron of their passion, for the next generation.

Ultimately, the NEH has been gutted, professional historians are in the firing line for conservatives, and the (admittedly reasonable) focus on university education as career development has truly destroyed history academia. Even Digital History work is barely funded. I've got a friend who has a PhD in history from a top department and the number of available Tenure Track positions in their field the year they graduated in the entire country was zero. Many of the history departments that I'm aware of are currently in a state of "we do not know if we will ever be able to hire a TT faculty member again."

These sorts of weird scrappy things are compromises that can hopefully help reinvigorate a culture appreciation for history and build collaboration with science and technology, which may provide enough interest to justify a bit more institutional funding.

I want history to be well funded. But it isn't. And it is perceived as an evil discipline by a stunning portion of our voting population. This weird side stuff helps.

>"buy lottery tickets with your money and time with the hope to win 10k", it just can't compete. The real lottery requires only money and offers a bigger reward without effort.

I mean the analogy doesn't really work because the calculation of the risk has to take into account number of people competing for prize.

Furthermore if you are going to do the lottery you only have chance to buy ticket, if you are going to compete for history prize you also have the importance of the idea you will demonstrate. Obviously people are apt to think their own ideas are really brilliant but that evaluation would go into deciding if it was useful to pursue that path.

But I would think winning this kind of thing might actually be more important not to be a historian but as a CV brightening bit for a job in a more lucrative field also requiring intellectual ability and analytical rigor.