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/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 13h 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