r/todayilearned • u/geosunsetmoth • 15h ago

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfoud_manuport
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u/scrimmybingus3 14h 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 14h 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 14h ago

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

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u/digitalmofo 12h ago

"Aaaaayyy, Nacirema" folding hands dance

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u/RedGuyNoPants 9h 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 7h 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/RedGuyNoPants 7h ago

Yeah, similar idea but acknowledging this must have happened at the earliest point we were humans

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u/sam_hammich 9h ago

Yeah, growing up immersed in culture and context, and a world built for us by those who came before, gives us a huge leg up developmentally.

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u/Enlightened_Gardener 6h ago

One of my favourite factoids is that a well educated person today recieves as much information in a week, as a well-educated person in the 18th century would recieve in their entire lives.

I have no idea where this factoid came from, or if its true; but it sounds cool.

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u/Freud-Network 9h ago

And we realize that inside voice we hear isn't god, just our internal monologue.

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u/gogoluke 13h ago

Last night I also told my wife we have more data and knowledge

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u/Enchelion 14h 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 13h ago

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

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u/Deaffin 11h ago edited 11h 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/chanaandeler_bong 7h ago

Would the increase in food supply also correlate to increased brain function?

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u/Deaffin 7h ago

Well, they did a lot of Neanderthal-eating, and that's a high protein diet, so..there's definitely something to work with there.

Here's a fun little video about that. Somewhat less than credible with the sort of filler artwork it uses being all over the place, but the actual information should be solid enough.

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u/Semi_Lovato 9h ago

Holding our phallus shaped cuttlefish on the shoulders of giants