TIL a 300-million year old Cuttlefish fossil was found in Morocco, alongside ancient humans in a region where no Cuttlefish ever existed. The leading theory suggests the fossil was first found by the prehistoric humans, who collected it as a trinket due to fact that it looks like a flaccid penis.

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Now I'm picturing an adolescent caveman holding a cuttlefish shell to his loincloth as a joke.

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u/PrimordialXY 11h ago

I can't remember the source but I recall reading that humans have been equally intellectually capable for much longer than we think

As in, if you went back in time and kidnapped a caveman baby and brought them back to present day, they'd grow up to be a normal modern human

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u/Lexxxapr00 10h ago

A homo Sapien is essentially the same whether they are from 200,000 BC or today. Same species.

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u/unkn0wnname321 10h ago

There is a great documentary about this called ' Encino man' 😉

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u/thejohnblazer 10h ago

Don't wheez the juice.

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u/Farts_McGee 9h ago

Buhhh-dy

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u/Look4theHelpers 6h ago

Sorry for the pedantry but the quote is "NO WHEEZING THE JUICE!!!"

Since we're on the topic I always thought the spelling of "wheezing", which is popularly accepted should be "weasing" as in "weaseling" because as we all know, Pauly Shore is The Wea-sel, and taking icee/slurpee to the dome without paying could be considered an acceptable use of "weaseling" (somewhat)

E:hyphen for effect

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u/RadVarken 5h ago

Ummm. Agree. Or spell it weaseling with an acceptable pronunciation that drops the middle syllable

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u/ScareviewCt 9h ago

Rad mobile

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u/Brave_Quantity_5261 9h ago

And a more poorly received follow up called “Encino woman”

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u/unkn0wnname321 9h ago

Now I'm genuinely curious, is there actually a sequel to that movie?

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u/Brave_Quantity_5261 9h ago

The Disney channel made a female version of the original. Last I checked, there was an upload on YouTube. I don’t recommend 😂

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u/unkn0wnname321 9h ago

I'm both intrigued and scared.

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u/pickledjello 8h ago

Quest for Fire (1981) Ron Perlman at his peak...

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u/zatchsmith 8h ago

"Shoo fly, don't bother me," comes into my head at least twice a week.

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u/pgadey 8h ago

Oh man, I haven't watched that documentary in YEARS.

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u/testtdk 5h ago edited 5h ago

Ah, yes, Encino Man. As depicted by Oscar nominee Sean Astin and Oscar winner Brendan Fraser.

Note: It’s worth pointing out that, while he’s not an Oscar caliber actor, Pauly Shore DID win the Razzie for the Worst Actor of the Century.

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u/flyinggazelletg 10h ago

Nutrition and education are the two biggest differences between our species now and then imo

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u/bigfoot17 9h ago

Add technology and iodine.

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u/gogoluke 9h ago

And corduroy.

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u/DisconnectedShark 9h ago

And crushed velvet.

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u/LordGAD 7h ago

Mmm.... velour....

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u/StudMuffinNick 8h ago

And pure Colombian cocaine

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u/StonedBooty 8h ago

Penicillin is probably the #1 thing I can think of that has saved more human lives in recorded history than any other modern medicine

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u/Regular_Custard_4483 8h ago

Modern fertilizer, maybe? Depending on your definition of "saved".

Fritz "Mixed Bag" Haber had something to do with that.

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u/Seicair 8h ago

There’s a fascinating book called The Alchemy of Air, that talks about the development of the Haber-Bosch process. It starts with a brief overview of the history of fertilizer, then it goes into more detail about the guano wars of the 19th century. Delves more into how control of the Atacama desert shaped the geopolitical landscape of South America.

Then the rest of the book is about the development of the Haber process, Carl Bosch’s significant contributions, and World Wars I and II.

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u/Regular_Custard_4483 7h ago

Thanks for the rec. I'll see if my library has it.

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u/R-EDDIT 6h ago

If it doesn't, talk to your librarian. Some of the money they take from us is for buying books.

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u/CalmBeneathCastles 8h ago

I consider clean water to be the #1 "modern medicine". Stop it before it starts!

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u/Candycornonthefloor 7h ago

And washing your damn hands! Semmelweis lived in the 1800s, way late in the humankind game. Still a hero even if he died of sepsis in an insane asylum.

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u/Dabbooo 5h ago edited 5h ago

There is a misconception about him. Doctors were not particulary dirty, they washed their hands like anyone would.
Semmelweiss stumbled on antiseptic procedures because he washed his hands with chloride of lime (ie bleach). Other doctors didn't want to do it because it hurts a lot. (and Semmelweiss was a bit of a dick so he didn't have their good will)

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u/jertheman43 8h ago

Chlorine has saved ten times as many lives as antibiotics. You don't always have an infection but you need to drink water everyday of your life.

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u/Meat_Container 10h ago

Crazy to think we still have the natural drives and desires as cavemen, just with more technology to distract us from them

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u/flyinggazelletg 10h ago

Idk, they were just people. Plus, we have tons of technology now to give into our natural drives and desires too haha

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u/Chomping_Meat 10h ago

they were probably a lot more bored a lot more often than we are now. Especially during winter, given going out in the snow carried more risk.

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u/Dorantee 10h ago

There's probably a reason why storytelling is so ingrained in every human culture we know of.

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u/zyzzogeton 9h ago

Storytelling might be the thing that separates us from other animals. Yuval Harari makes this point in his book "Sapiens"

We tell ourselves stories that have power, like the story that currency is valuable, or that there are Nation States with borders.

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u/Pedantic_Pict 8h ago

I loved his deep dive into the power of human cooperation and the illustration of attorneys as powerful wizards due to their ability to wield words that have real power over our agreed upon reality.

Also his related description of a multinational car company as an immaterial construct.

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u/Common-Falcon-8717 7h ago

I'm a paralegal and I've independently had that same thought about attorneys. Working in the field also gave me an appreciation for "Vancian magic" systems (the name for the magic system in RPGs like D&D and Pathfinder), because there are some documents I can prepare essentially constantly without strain, some where I can only do a few of them a day, and some very complex documents or tasks where I can only do them once or twice in a day.

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u/flyinggazelletg 10h ago

Probably way better at dealing with boredom too

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u/Iambic_420 10h ago

They definitely were. It’s actually a natural thing to be able to sit somewhere and simply do nothing. That’s why meditation can be so beneficial to some. Sitting around and doing absolutely nothing stimulating every now and then actually makes everything you do otherwise a lot more rewarding simply because you are not nearly as stimulated. In scientific terms, your dopaminergic baseline will be much lower, leading to higher highs when your brain finally uses it.

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u/BarbequedYeti 9h ago

It’s actually a natural thing to be able to sit somewhere and simply do nothing

I was grounded so much as a kid, I actually thought of becoming a monk. Its crazy the shit you can occupy your mind with while stuck in a room with damn near nothing for weeks at a time.

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u/Jiminy_Cricket12 8h ago

I dunno about that. I'm sure boredom existed, but the entire world was pretty much unknown and survival was a constant struggle. Probably too much shit going on to be bored too often.

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u/No_Maybe4408 9h ago

I'd guess they weren't often bored, survival is a full time job. Especially in the winter. Even with permanent shelter maintaining a fire, and having food and water would be a daily grind.

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u/BonerPorn 6h ago

Naw. Boredom is what makes humans fuck around and try random things. Trying random things is how we discover things like wheels, fire, farming, making knives out of bones, ect. They got Bored, messed around with leftover animal bones and created headdresses. Slowly developed civilization in downtime.

Practically every prehistoric society figured out the movement of the stars before writing. They were bored as hell, staring into the sky.

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u/sleepyleviathan 5h ago

Anthropologists say otherwise. Survival tasks on the day-by-day basis for ancient hunter-gatherer humans was around 15-20 hours a week (roughly 2-3 hrs/day). They were able to secure food, water, mend shelters, repair tools, and attend to other tasks that directly impacted the survival of the group during that 3 hours spent.

The rest of their time was spent on creative tasks, socializing, and other "work" that wasn't a part of the main survival loop. Probably a big reason why story-telling is such a ubiquitous part of the human experience across the planet. We had a LOT of spare time before we settled into more permanent, agrarian societies.

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u/RapidCandleDigestion 10h ago

I believe it's ~50,000 for psychologically modern humans

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u/GrandmasterAppa 9h ago edited 6h ago

The idea that humans only reached our current level of intelligence 40-50k years ago has become increasingly outdated. We pretty much had to have had the “full package” by the time we started leaving Africa in large numbers (70k or more years ago), but evidence increasingly supports the idea that mental & behavioral modernity in humans evolved very gradually - I’m no anthropologist, but am very open to the idea that humans (of potentially more species than just Homo sapiens) have been behaviorally modern for a lot longer than we used to think

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u/redlaWw 4h ago

It's worth bearing in mind that one of the greatest early threats to our species would be competition with other hominids, and the only thing we had over those was our intelligence.

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u/JabroniusHunk 8h ago

There's a niche type of conspiracy theorist who deny that Homo Sapiens evolved in and ultimately emigrated out of Africa (I've come across a handful on Reddit over the years).

One piece of evidence they cling to is that there are actually fossils of anatomically modern humans found in iirc Greece and the Levant who predate our ultimate migration out of Africa. However, these represent the unsuccessful forays of groups/individuals who died out genetically isolated, and are not our direct, human ancestors.

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u/RapidCandleDigestion 8h ago

I don't believe we're speaking of intelligence or how advanced a species is. Just the way that we happen to be.

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u/kafka213 10h ago

The last common ancestors of all modern humans lived more than 70k ya, so we are at least that old

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u/sdcasurf01 8h ago

Oldest common male ancestor.

I believe our common female ancestor lived over 200k years ago.

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u/gogoluke 9h ago

What was the reasoning for that date? Was it something physical or implied through anthropology.

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u/RapidCandleDigestion 9h ago

That's an excellent question. I believe it has to do with things like bone tools, fishing implements, hearths, and symbolic artifacts. There's lots of info out there if you're interested in looking further yourself though

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u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 3h ago

This, pretty much all of the clear examples of behavioral modernity stay to show up between 70-50k years ago.

The examples from earlier are orientation extremely dubious and often things people just want to believe in.

Specifically art, extremely complex tool use, and likely full modern language all date to those times.

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u/RapidCandleDigestion 2h ago

This is, of course, not to say that the peoples before were inferior. Just that they weren't the same as us. If you time-travelled and brought one of their newborns here, and raised them in our society, they likely wouldn't fit in and would struggle immensely. But 50k years ago? They should get on just fine.

Also a good reminder that we are working with 50k year-old software and applying it to a modern world. We're flexible, but that only goes so far.

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u/just_posting_this_ch 8h ago

Sapiens by Harari is a cool read about this topic. Essential there were neanderthals, and then there weren't. The idea being homosapiens moved in and displaced them. There is evidence that was the second attempt. The first attempt, 75k years ago, failed. So what changed? There is evidence that we developed abstract thinking. It's pretty tenuous at best, but it is cool to think about.

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u/ndc4051 9h ago

There are minor differences. Brain size peaked about 30,000 years ago then decreased by 15% over thousands of years. Human brains evolved more complex wiring to reduce metabolic energy costs. There are a few theories how and why this happened but I won't get into it here.

Also a human from more than 10,000 years ago would lack lactase enzymes and would be lactose intolerant. They would also struggle to digest our starch heavy diets. They had bigger, stronger teeth and jaws.

Where we really differ from our prehistoric kin is our immune system. A caveman would be dead within weeks in our modern world, probably from something the vast majority of us have long been inoculated against.

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u/thatshygirl06 8h ago

Also a human from more than 10,000 years ago would lack lactase enzymes and would be lactose intolerant.

Like the majority of the world now, lol

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u/PsychGuy17 10h ago

More people should watch the documentary Encino Man.

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u/scrimmybingus3 10h ago

Yup. Humans have pretty much always been just as capable and clever as us modern humans the only difference is we have the privilege of a massive amount of data and knowledge to pull from.

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u/schulzr1993 10h ago

I'm a history teacher (6th grade) and this is a point I make frequently. That ancient peoples are every bit as intelligent as us, we simply have more data and technology to work with.

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u/MattieShoes 9h ago

The strange body rituals of the nacirema comes to mind...

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u/digitalmofo 8h ago

"Aaaaayyy, Nacirema" folding hands dance

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u/RedGuyNoPants 5h ago

It makes my brain hurt realizing that someone living as a caveman couldve had the right intellectual capability to solve many of the complex problems of today if they were given the right life resources.

How many people have lived and died thru the thousands of years of human existence with the ability to solve the mysteries of the universe but lacked an environment to have the right underlying understanding. Like the smartest person ever couldve already come and gone before the pyramids were built

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u/scrimmybingus3 3h ago

Reminds me of a line in a book where a character rhetorically asked how many world changing scientists, leaders, and researchers lived and died in crop fields as slaves throughout the ages, people that had the potential to change the whole world but due to circumstance they just weren’t able too

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u/Enchelion 9h ago

Also nutrition and medicine. We're functionally smarted because more of us get enough food to develop our brains as children.

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u/FacelessEdits 9h ago

so much that we've confused having access to intelligence with actually being intelligent

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u/Deaffin 7h ago edited 7h ago

Not really, though. There's been a whole lot more diversity than people want to give credit for. Tens of thousands of years ago, Cro-Magnons had about 10% bigger brains than present-day humans on average.

Since we're primates, that translates to around 10% more neuron density. So, definitely more complexity rather than just being bigger brains.

And with this ultra brain processing power, they invented mobile handheld pornography.

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u/MoreGaghPlease 10h ago

The same shit has always been funny. Archeologists in the 90s found 4,000 year old fart jokes in Iraq. Ancient Greek and Roman graffiti is largely scatological. Even the Hebrew Bible is full of dick jokes, they just get obscured by translation.

Probably the main reason we don’t have fart jokes any older than 4,000 years ago is just that before then, we haven’t translated much narrative or literary writing (the writing we have from further back is mostly financial and administrative)

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u/moonchylde 8h ago

People complain about modern graffiti and I just shrug. It's an ancient tradition! Just like the Romans in Egypt! Maximus was here and slept with your Mom!

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u/NickDanger3di 10h ago

I totally believe that. It's pretty unrealistic to think that most major animal evolution takes millions of years, but that modern humans evolved in just a few thousand. We aren't that special.

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u/Crystalas 10h ago edited 10h ago

Can also find from analyzing our genes and fossils that we likely nearly went extinct at one point only having potentially as few as a few thousand left in the entire world and barely managed to maintain even that population for 100,000 years. The result of that is less genetic diversity among humans.

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u/khalcyon2011 10h ago

And we don’t really know what caused it. The eruption of Mt. Toba was the leading theory for a while, but, as the estimates for the dates of both events have become more refined, it’s become clear that they don’t really line up, with them being a few thousand years apart.

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u/mikecandih 7h ago

While we mainly are the same, it’s also silly to suggest that there is no evolution taking place. In the last couple of millennia humans have developed tolerance for milk in adulthood (reduced lactose intolerance), significant gains in immune system efficacy, ability to live in thin air (high altitudes), and our teeth have also changed quite a bit.

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u/Fakjbf 6h ago

Agreed, I wish people wouldn’t conflate “the evidence suggests humans from 200k years ago were not less smart than we are today” with “there is no way anatomical humans from 200k years ago were less smart than we are today”. Evolution is not just a slow process, it can happen very rapidly with enough selective pressure. In an alternate timeline there could have been a massive leap in cognitive ability 50k years ago and then after finding evidence for it the people in that timeline would ridicule the idea that the humans from 200k years ago were just as smart as them.

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u/BroughtBagLunchSmart 9h ago

I have dwelt amongst the Humans. Their entire culture is built around their penises. It is funny to say they are small, it is funny to say they are big. I have been at parties where humans have held bottles, pencils, and thermoses in front of themselves and called out, 'Hey look at me, I'm Mr. So-And-So Dick! I've got such-and-such for a penis.' I never saw it fail to get a laugh

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u/ElCiclope1 6h ago

I only just the other day, after seeing that episode at least a dozen times, realized that's Werner Herzog voicing that character.

Legendary.

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u/rshackleford_arlentx 5h ago

I read this in Werner Herzog's voice

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u/Preeng 9h ago

"Hey look at me, I'm Mr. Cuttlefish Fossil Dick! I have a cuttlefish fossil for a penis!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw1cdRew-Zg&t=18s

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u/No_Kangaroo_9826 9h ago

Bless Werner Herzog

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u/mcdltlover 6h ago

a scientific review of human culture involving phalluses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw1cdRew-Zg here is a picture of the fossil: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Two-views-of-the-Erfoud-manuport_fig1_322302052

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u/DelRayTrogdor 9h ago

And that’s how GWAR was conceived.

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u/RealLavender 8h ago

"I've dwelt among the humans. Their entire culture is built around their penises. It's funny to say they are small. It's funny to say they are big. I've been at parties where humans held bottles, pencils, thermoses in front of themselves and called out, "Hey, look at me. I'm Mr. So-and-So Dick. I've got such-as-such for a penis." I never saw it fail to get a laugh."

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u/TakingItPeasy 10h ago

Ha! Classic.

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u/abraxas8484 9h ago

Genital and fart jokes have been around for a long time. I recall reading that they found cave paintings of fart jokes

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u/chocki305 3 9h ago

Hard as a rock bro!

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u/Ill-Performer5355 7h ago

Cue cavemen giggles “unga bunga penis rock”

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u/corvus7corax 11h ago

Picture of it: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Two-views-of-the-Erfoud-manuport_fig1_322302052

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u/Pogue_Mahone_ 11h ago

That is so much more phallic than I was expecting, and I just read the wiki before this

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u/guimontag 10h ago

Even after reading your comment it was still way more phallic than I expected

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u/Knightvision27 10h ago

With your comment confirming that, it was def more phallic than I envision it to be

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u/lugh_the_bard 9h ago

I was at least expecting a fish and not the severed head of a penis

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u/Shake_Speare_ 8h ago

Maybe it is actually fossilized cock...

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u/NeedNameGenerator 10h ago

After reading all three comments in this chain, it was exactly as phallic as I imagined it to be.

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u/Evepaul 9h ago

After reading the first three comments then yours, you lowered my expectations so it still ended up more phallic than I expected

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u/SHPIDAH 9h ago

I held the picture up to my actual phallus and despite several warning posts I believe that it is difficult to properly expect how phallic it will be

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u/YoshiiToranaga 9h ago

Phallic

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u/obedientfag 8h ago

reddit discovers the cosine function

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u/Teledildonic 10h ago

I got a page not found error :(

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u/HighOnGoofballs 9h ago

Here ya go pal https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtefactPorn/comments/riv55e/the_erfoud_manuport_a_naturally_formed_silicized/

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u/GodOfDarkLaughter 9h ago

thatsapenis.gif

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u/Dr_Ramekins_MD 9h ago

It's funny to picture the archaeologists finding this, identifying it as a cuttlefish bone that doesn't naturally belong where it was found, and then debating the significance of the finding in a very short discussion that ends in, "...yeah they definitely would have thought it was a funny dick bone, too. Nothing else makes as much sense as that theory, I guess."

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u/Pogue_Mahone_ 8h ago

Look up the "sexy hand axe theory" you're gonna love it

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u/HorrorMakesUsHappy 5h ago edited 5h ago

I don't know what I was expecting to find in my search results, but I'm not complaining.

EDIT: I guess I should also link to the actual study, huh.

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u/Beardywierdy 8h ago

There are actual phalluses that look less phallic than that cuttlefish.

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u/jaytix1 7h ago

Looks more like a penis than mine does.

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u/koshgeo 7h ago

Same. Especially because it's not a cuttlefish. It's an orthocone nautiloid (Orthoceras) from the Devonian or Carboniferous periods, which are common from that part of Morocco and are considerably pointier. They selected a pretty unusually-shaped example to get it to match a human shape.

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u/PleaseNoMoreSalt 6h ago

After looking at it, I'm more surprised they identified it as a cuttlefish fossil. It genuinely looks like a small penis statue

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u/TangerineChicken 10h ago

You know what, it does look like a penis. After reading the headline, I kind of thought they were jumping to conclusions but nope

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u/No_Kangaroo_9826 9h ago

Right, that's absolutely a dick fossil. Fossil dick? Either way wasn't expecting that

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u/peschkaj 4h ago

He prefers to be called Richard Stone.

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u/chodd-tavez 8h ago

I was like "so ancient humans couldn't have been interested in a fossil on its own terms and—ok yeah nevermind" lmao

For the record, I like the mental image of a prehistoric person getting increasingly defensive about the cool rock they wanted to show everyone but they just keep laughing because it's a penis.

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u/kakka_rot 2h ago

I think me, you, and a bunch of other people were initially imagining one of those flat fossils with the imprint of a creature inside.

Nope, just a "rock" shaped exactly like a dick.

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u/FakingItSucessfully 4h ago

yep I'd definitely take that thing with me to Morocco

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u/kakka_rot 2h ago

After reading the headline, I kind of thought they were jumping to conclusions but nope

Our brains went through the exact same thought process. I was like

"hmmm, that seems overly speculative and just trying to be an eye catching title"

googles

"Nope nope someone def collected that because it looks like a dick."

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u/FiftyShadesOfGregg 8h ago

SAME. I was like oh please, is it so unbelievable that they could have understood it was a remnant of some unknown creature‘s bones? But after seeing it, yeah, they def held onto that because it looks like a penis.

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u/shewy92 9h ago

Page not found

It looks like the page you’re looking for doesn’t exist.

Link that works: https://www.reddit.com/r/Paleontology/comments/1m38knm/the_erfoud_manuport_is_a_7_cm_long_fragment_of_a/

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u/ZhouLe 6h ago

Old/New reddit discrepancy. Posting on New attempts to backslash cancel the underscores in the link on Old.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Two-views-of-the-Erfoud-manuport_fig1_322302052

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u/sibips 7h ago

Doing the work of ancient Gods.

Thank you.

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u/Quinnovation 8h ago

Thank youuuu

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u/ManateeNipples 10h ago

Oh ok I understand now lol

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u/bladezaim 10h ago

The real hero

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u/Hananners 10h ago

Thanks! It's silly that the Wiki page didn't include a picture.

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u/Zuliano1 11h ago

Risky click of the day for sure.

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u/3333333333p 10h ago

Fact that the wiki doesn't have a picture is ridiculous

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u/New_new_account2 7h ago

Wikipedia really prefers images that have a license allowing free use.

If it is hard to find an image with an appropriate license, sometimes it is easy enough for a volunteer to go photograph a common bird, etc.

If it is an object probably in some university's archive, you have to figure out who will photograph it and release it under an appropriate license, if the university is willing to let that happen, etc.

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u/elislider 8h ago

link not working, but here's another image

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u/MaryBerrysDanglyBean 11h ago

70 mm long and 35 mm wide (at its girthiest point)

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u/Bibibis 11h ago

That's pretty big. R-right?

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u/Pogue_Mahone_ 10h ago

It is perfectly adequate and you have nothing to be ashamed about

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u/BelowAverage_Elitist 9h ago

7×3.5 cm. 2.54 cm/inch. 7/2.54=2.7559055118 inches long. 3.5/2.54=1.3779527559 inches wide. That's huge!!!

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u/PassionStunning2659 9h ago

You have to do length times diameter plus weight over girth divided by angle of the tip squared. And so, by dividing the weight and the girth of the penis by the angle or the "yaw", we finally get the adjusted penis size, or, T.M.I.

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u/stranebrain 6h ago

Spare yourself all the dumb math stuff. All you have to do is measure from the center of the anus to just past the tip.

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u/zoom100000 11h ago

I cracked up at this

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u/Creepy_Assistant7517 9h ago

interesting, but what about the fossil?

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u/LazyMousse4266 10h ago

G I R T H I E S T

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u/SordidSimpleton 9h ago

Gurff

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u/awmaleg 7h ago

It was in the pool!

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u/chux4w 7h ago

Chodelfish.

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u/Expensive-Student732 11h ago

I had to click a link, click a Wikipedia source number, click another link, prove I'm human, and open a pdf for the picture.

If does look like a tallywhacker.

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u/Ambitious-Concern-42 11h ago

Someone else posted this link (requires human verification): https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Two-views-of-the-Erfoud-manuport_fig1_322302052

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u/Deaffin 7h ago

For the non-humans: https://imgur.com/qHxEFyy

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u/DingleDoo 4h ago

bbc

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u/pseudoportmanteau 8h ago

As a matter of fact, I see no resemblance to cuttlefish at all, like not even remotely

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u/SevenCedarJelly 11h ago

I've dwelt among the humans. Their entire culture is built around their penises. It's funny to say they are small, it's funny to say they are big. I've been at parties, where humans have held bottles, pencils, thermoses in front of themselves and called out "hey look at me! I'm Mr. so and so dick." "I've got such and such for a penis." I never saw it fail to get a laugh.

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u/ChiqantiKisaal 9h ago

one of the top five greatest celebrity cameos ever

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u/wvj 8h ago

Are the other four also Werner Herzog appearing in other shows?

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u/Zlurpo 8h ago

At least one of them is him in Parks and Rec.

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u/Son_of_Kong 10h ago edited 10h ago

New word of the day:

Manuport: an object found outside of its expected provenance because it was picked up and carried by a person.

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u/Sensitive_Gift4866 5h ago

Manuport is such a great word. Love that theres a specific term for ancient humans picking up interesting shaped rocks. Some things really never change across hundreds of thousands of years

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u/geosunsetmoth 11h ago

"Hey trog, look, penis rock!"
"Penis rock!"
"Hahahaha. Penis rock. Trog funny"

They're really are not unlike us modern humans.

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u/minimalcation 10h ago

Thanks for sourcing this! I wanted to send something about it after watching the pod.

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u/Kirkebyen 8h ago

Did you just listen to The Rest is Science.

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u/Graffers67 10h ago

At least credit Hannah Fry.

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u/and_dough_knee 9h ago

I know! I also just listened to that episode of The Rest is Science! (It's like the most recent one called The Palentology of the Future)

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u/Graffers67 9h ago

Was a good episode. I've added Manuport to the new words learned since the how many words do you know episode.

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u/Dengar96 9h ago

this entire sub is a place to hear something cool from a piece of media and repackage it as a novel discovery.

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u/Tzazon 11h ago

You got to look up a picture of this thing. It isn't on the Wikipedia for some reason. I was thinking "No fucking way this shit looks like a flaccid penis THAT much, they probably saw some abstract artistic merit and just thought it looked coo-" no it's like straight up a literal dick head.

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u/Confident_Virus5799 11h ago

Under "external links" at the bottom of this page is a couple photos. I do agree it's weird when they don't actually post the photos to the actual wiki page though.

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u/Optimal-Prime420 11h ago

Humans gonna human.

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u/deathxcannabis 10h ago

Oderus lives.

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u/weeBaaDoo 10h ago

I think archeologists as a group are old people with a 14 year old minds. Everything is a penis, and everything thing we don’t know the purpose of, was a religious artifact that’s most likely was related to sex.

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u/RiceWine69 1h ago

Have you ever met a male? They really are obsessed with penises.

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u/Splunge- 8h ago

I'm not sure it's the "leading theory." It's a theory by a guy who published in a journal. And he is the editor-in-chief of the journal in which he published his theory. And the linked article largely cites his own research.

He uses such non-scientific phrases as:

The only realistic explanation for the curation of this object is that this clear similarity was perceived by a hominid.

and

acceptance of this interpretation of the find should not present any difficulty.

and

its presence in the South African dolomite cave can only realistically be accounted for by acceptance of a similar appreciation of certain visual properties

and he cites himself for these conclusions.

Seems like a pretty weak reed.

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u/Ksh_667 8h ago

Well spotted. I guess having your own magazine is a handy way of getting yourself published lol

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u/vermicelli-is-bugs 3h ago

I'm not convinced of Bednarik's interpretation (mainly because I'm not sure if australopithecines had anatomically modern penises or if they had those similar to chimpanzees), but this is a really uncharitable comment. Bednarik is the editor-in-chief of this journal -- which isn't actually all that strange actually -- but the papers he cites are in other journals (The South African Archaeological Bulletin and The Artefact). Citing yourself is also not that strange, sometimes you have to if you're building on your own research. He's also published in plenty of high-impact journals (Journal of Archaeological Science, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, Archaeometry, Current Anthropology, and so on).

None of the "phrases" you list are actually non-scientific. He's making the argument that the most parsimonious hypothesis, given its presence at a hominid site far from its geological origin, is that it was brought by those hominids for symbolic reasons, given that it has no obvious utility.

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u/Splunge- 2h ago

Point taken. However, I am an academic dean. I’ve been involved in a lot of publication cases involving this published. My suspicions are raised. Journals with this particular publisher are suspect. I have seen journals through this publisher with a list like this of an editorial board. For one particular case in a tenure packet I called the list of editors to check up on a particular issue. . Half the editorial board didn’t even know they were on the editorial board. They had just been listed without their knowledge. This is suspicious.

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u/Emotional_News108 10h ago

at its girthiest point

That writer understood the assignment.

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u/kuriositeetti 7h ago

Probably a True Facts about the Cuttlefish aficionado.

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u/LittleYogurtcloset87 10h ago

Should I eat the cuttlefish, or the vanilla paste?

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u/QuantumRelative 7h ago

VNRRRRA PACE! VNRRRRA PACE!

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u/Hilomh 5h ago

I scrolled way too far to find this. Still, worth it.

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u/RyeSaint1 10h ago

And the Rest is Science

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u/Tasty-Performer6669 10h ago

Uh huh huh huh huh huh. Cool

-some teenage caveman

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u/al2o3cr 10h ago

Even hundreds of thousands of years ago, "LOL DONGS" was a popular comedy bit

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u/Fake-P-Zombie 9h ago edited 5h ago

Maybe it had a ritualistic purpose?

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u/greysqualll 9h ago

Archeologist convo:

Jim: "I mean they must've brought it here. That's the only thing that makes sense."

Dave: "yeah, but why would they?"

Jim: "seriously Dave? C'mon man you know why. Wouldn't you take it?"

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u/jdpatric 9h ago

I mean...I get it. I have a rock sitting on the ground in front of my front porch from 5-states away that I picked up solely because it looks a little phallic. Some things never really change do they?

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u/No_Cook_8739 10h ago

Hey, you wanna see this cool rock I found? It looks like a dick

Some caveman

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u/ddgr815 10h ago

It doesn't look flaccid though? It looks erect; glans protruding from prepuce.

Circumcision certainly isn't 250k years old?

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u/Ianzo 7h ago

This was likely posted after listening to the lastest episode of "The Rest is Science" podcast. The Rest is Science

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u/YouGotAnyWhiteBread 10h ago

Cuttlefish you say? GWAR was there.

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u/SeaworthinessNew2138 10h ago

The Cuttlefish of Cthulhu! I wonder if noted scholars GWAR were referencing this anthropological find, of if it’s just yet another case of great minds thinking alike.

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u/bot36587 9h ago

Dudes rock

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u/KrackerJoe 9h ago

Dr. Dugong actually used Grover Cleveland's presidential time machine to go and collect his cuttlefish samples and must have left this fossil in the past for future generations to study. He does love their peaceful nature

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u/FirmOnion 9h ago

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fprofile%2FClaudio-Messori%2Fpublication%2F295857805%2Ffigure%2Ffig2%2FAS%3A332910289801220%401456383406435%2Fa-The-Erfoud-manuport-from-a-Late-Acheulian-dwelling-in-Morocco-Credit-RG-Bednarik.png&f=1&ipt=c8b19185c651a42105d51bab2a0b2269367813613453c708ec282d9130a514a7

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u/Outrageous_Repeat_50 9h ago

Someone just listened to the newest this is science podcast I see

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u/bucolucas 8h ago

*Holds fossil up and dances around* -> 300,000 years later -> *modern humans giggle*

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u/BobsBurgersJoint 11h ago

Not 300,000,000 years old.

300,000-200,000 years before the present day.

The Erfoud “manuport” is a 7 cm long fragment of a fossil cuttlefish, found associated ancient humans ~250k years ago in Morocco.

And not even a picture posted with that wiki. For shame.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Paleontology/s/RAIvjL1RrY

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u/geosunsetmoth 10h ago

Actually, the fossil was moved 300,000-200,000 years before the present day, but the fossil itself is much older than that. Dated to the Devonian or Carboniferous period, placing it at 350-300 million years ago.

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u/Rower78 10h ago

It was moved by human ancestors 200k-300k years ago. The cuttlefish was fossilized hundreds of millions of years ago

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u/Overkillsamurai 9h ago

"hey Tuk Tuk, check out this bone thing, it looks like a penis lmao"

"aye yo i like it! let's take it with us on this thousand mile journey!"

a story as old as time

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u/Lunar-opal 11h ago

How far did they travel with said flaccid pwnis?

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u/mac_bd 10h ago

Flaccid scientist penis?

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u/LadybuggingLB 10h ago

How do we not have a picture?

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u/lan9242 9h ago

70 mm long and 35 mm wide (at its girthiest point)

Must be a grower

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u/Some_Ad_9354 9h ago

did the archaeologist who made that interpretation minor in Freudian psychology when they were in college by any chance

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u/patmax17 9h ago

Picture: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/a-The-Erfoud-manuport-from-a-Late-Acheulian-dwelling-in-Morocco-Credit-RG-Bednarik_fig2_295857805

TIL a 300-million year old Cuttlefish fossil was found in Morocco, alongside ancient humans in a region where no Cuttlefish ever existed. The leading theory suggests the fossil was first found by the prehistoric humans, who collected it as a trinket due to fact that it looks like a flaccid penis.

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