We used tanning beds to punish people

I came across the following quote from Olivia Wilde a while ago and it struck me as being particularly insightful: 

In a thousand years archeologists will dig up tanning beds and think we fried people as punishment.

The reason why I think this is insightful is because I think it characterizes the fragmentary nature with which we view the ancient past. We have a few texts and artifacts from the ancient past and from these we must somehow reconstruct their culture.

This is not to call into question the conclusions that we have made from archaeological discoveries and ancient texts concerning their cultures. In fact I think the majority of these conclusions are correct. But sometimes I wonder if someone from the ancient past were to visit us today, and we described their culture to them, how many of our conclusions about their culture would strike them as silly as the conclusion Ms. Wilde describes strikes us? I think it would be more than we think. We are too confident in our own conclusions sometimes I think.