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When reading this I like to imagine the caveperson who made this pendant and how they would react to seeing entire teams of humans 40,000 years later using vast

When reading this I like to imagine the caveperson who made this pendant and how they would react to seeing entire teams of humans 40,000 years later using vast swathes of incredible space-age technology to analyze every microscopic detail of its creation.

BarryMilo 5y ago
I'm pretty sure it would just seem like actual magic to them
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  They wouldn't be able to comprehend what was happening - alien abduction, cosmic horror kind of experience. But at the same time, they would be like "Why do they care so much about something I just whittled together in an hour?"
  - codeulike 5y ago
    Then again, there's still a lot about today that they would find familiar. If you took them camping and did some drumming around a campfire, they'd be pretty much at home. If you took them to a wedding or to a funeral they would have some cultural recognition of the reasons for the ceremony, even if the ceremony itself was unfamiliar.
  - dvh 5y ago
    Reminds me a scene from "The man from earth", when asked for some kind of proof or artifact from the era, he asked if you would keep a pen if you lived a thousand years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAX2RuZm-Fk&t=1275s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAX2RuZm-Fk&t=1275s
    - kingcharles 5y ago
      That is one of my all time favourite movies/plays. It makes a good point though. I've lost all of my possessions twice in my life so far and I'm only in my forties. How many objects owned by your great-grandparents still remain in your family?
      - Ancapistani 5y ago
        Honestly, many that I’m aware of, and likely many more that I’m not. I have my great-grandfather’s .32 revolver, which he acquired in 1895. It came with the original holster, a couple of boxes of ammunition from ~1920, and a cased cleaning kit that he got with it. I have two of my great-granmother’s cast iron skillets - a #3 and a #9 Griswold. My wife has a quilt that her grandmother made by hand when she was a girl. It includes pieces made from the wedding dresses of at least five generations, going back to my wife’s grandmother’s grandmother. I have a tool chest that’s been passed down at least twice that I know of. My grandfather called it “Grandpa Metcalf’s toolbox”… it’s safe to say that the box itself is at least 150 years old, and many of the tools are likely older still. I’d expect that this sort of thing is much more common for rural families, who tend to live in one place for generations.
TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
A related thought: what will humans and culture be like in another 41,500 years? What will those humans analyze from our time?
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Way we're going, about like when they made the pendant, except with guns and distilled alcohol.
- mach1ne 5y ago
  If a human from 41,500 years ago asked how humans look like nowadays, I guess the answer would be that we still like food, sex and power, but have developed to acquire all of those things more efficiently. Ultimately practically everything we do has been to serve those ends.
marcus_holmes 5y ago
I like the idea that this wasn't even a finished, elaborate object. This was just someone doodling around on a piece of ivory, seeing what interesting shapes they could make. And we're treating it as the highest possible artistic output of their entire culture and analysing it with our incredible space-age tech. I like to think their reaction would be embarrassment, like "please, I was just experimenting with that, I didn't even know how to do the drilling properly back then, there's so many better pieces being done by other people. Find one of them and analyse that, please. This is so embarrassing"

BarryMilo 5y ago

I'm pretty sure it would just seem like actual magic to them

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
They wouldn't be able to comprehend what was happening - alien abduction, cosmic horror kind of experience. But at the same time, they would be like "Why do they care so much about something I just whittled together in an hour?"
- codeulike 5y ago
  Then again, there's still a lot about today that they would find familiar. If you took them camping and did some drumming around a campfire, they'd be pretty much at home. If you took them to a wedding or to a funeral they would have some cultural recognition of the reasons for the ceremony, even if the ceremony itself was unfamiliar.
- dvh 5y ago
  Reminds me a scene from "The man from earth", when asked for some kind of proof or artifact from the era, he asked if you would keep a pen if you lived a thousand years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAX2RuZm-Fk&t=1275s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAX2RuZm-Fk&t=1275s
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    That is one of my all time favourite movies/plays. It makes a good point though. I've lost all of my possessions twice in my life so far and I'm only in my forties. How many objects owned by your great-grandparents still remain in your family?
    - Ancapistani 5y ago
      Honestly, many that I’m aware of, and likely many more that I’m not. I have my great-grandfather’s .32 revolver, which he acquired in 1895. It came with the original holster, a couple of boxes of ammunition from ~1920, and a cased cleaning kit that he got with it. I have two of my great-granmother’s cast iron skillets - a #3 and a #9 Griswold. My wife has a quilt that her grandmother made by hand when she was a girl. It includes pieces made from the wedding dresses of at least five generations, going back to my wife’s grandmother’s grandmother. I have a tool chest that’s been passed down at least twice that I know of. My grandfather called it “Grandpa Metcalf’s toolbox”… it’s safe to say that the box itself is at least 150 years old, and many of the tools are likely older still. I’d expect that this sort of thing is much more common for rural families, who tend to live in one place for generations.

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago

A related thought: what will humans and culture be like in another 41,500 years? What will those humans analyze from our time?

ncmncm 5y ago
Way we're going, about like when they made the pendant, except with guns and distilled alcohol.
mach1ne 5y ago
If a human from 41,500 years ago asked how humans look like nowadays, I guess the answer would be that we still like food, sex and power, but have developed to acquire all of those things more efficiently. Ultimately practically everything we do has been to serve those ends.

marcus_holmes 5y ago

I like the idea that this wasn't even a finished, elaborate object. This was just someone doodling around on a piece of ivory, seeing what interesting shapes they could make. And we're treating it as the highest possible artistic output of their entire culture and analysing it with our incredible space-age tech. I like to think their reaction would be embarrassment, like "please, I was just experimenting with that, I didn't even know how to do the drilling properly back then, there's so many better pieces being done by other people. Find one of them and analyse that, please. This is so embarrassing"