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jxj24 t1_j9v0psn wrote

The Lice Age.

1,625

Stachemaster86 t1_j9volee wrote

Way better than my lousey joke.

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MasterLapp t1_j9wouov wrote

What was your joke?

Edit: oh shiiit I see it now, I'm way too high, thanks.

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Feine13 t1_j9wp9nh wrote

Louse is the singular noun for lice, it was a pun, and an excellent one at that

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dibalh t1_j9x4rmk wrote

Is it really a pun when that’s the literal etymology of the word?

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Feine13 t1_ja04ehj wrote

Yes, because if their joke was of poor quality, it would be "lousy". Add the E between the S and Y and now it's a play on words

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daisy0723 t1_j9v0rwn wrote

They can also determine when we lost our body hair by studying the differences between head lice, body lice and genital lice. I watched a documentary about it years ago.

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pete1901 t1_j9v12i0 wrote

Due to modern pubic hair trends, pubic lice are becoming far less numerous too.

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dariamorgandorfferr t1_j9wi9ns wrote

If humans collectively decided to be completely bald head to toe for 1 generation all lice would go extinct, and I think that's the only thing that could unite humanity 😂

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LorenzoStomp t1_j9wktvd wrote

I don't think it would even have to be for that long. Like what's a lice lifespan? A month? Everybody stays shaved for half a year just to be safe and make sure we've tracked down all the stragglers and we're done.

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TheMightyTywin t1_j9wqs04 wrote

We couldn’t even wear masks.. you want the whole world to shave?

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BrashPop t1_j9wvzsz wrote

Now I’m mad thinking about everybody shaving their heads and bodies except like a hundred assholes who just refuse because “It won’t even help, look, I got lice on PURPOSE just to prove how stupid everyone else is!”

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IterationFourteen t1_j9wz1qj wrote

100 is extremally optimistic. More likely ~20%.

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Fark_ID t1_j9zhnja wrote

Wouldn't that 20% then inherit 100% of the lice, thusly eliminating them?

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ZirePhiinix t1_j9xed01 wrote

Convince them the lice is there to spy on you

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NullDivision t1_j9xwz1x wrote

They're like mini government tracker balls on a mocap suit to follow your EVERY ^MOOVVEEEE!!!

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goodtimesforachange6 t1_j9y5h7v wrote

I totally read that wrong and thought you meant some people not shaving their assholes

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VentureQuotes t1_j9xm04s wrote

Conservatives would grow more hair because they live to vice signal. Lice signaling is vice signaling

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TheOftenNakedJason t1_j9xhoie wrote

Hahaha I love this comment. I want it embroidered in a pillow with a minimalist picture of a guy with a beard.

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dariamorgandorfferr t1_j9wn4s1 wrote

I think about this a lot especially with bed bugs. They're an interesting example in ecology because the species of bed bugs we know of .. only parasitizes humans. Unlike mosquitoes, they play 0 role in natural ecosystems, they're fully obligate humanivores. We could fully eradicate bed bugs with no negative consequences to mother nature. Science get on this lol

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CrazedClown101 t1_j9wreex wrote

We tried but we kept killing the eagles.

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bloodmonarch t1_j9wwfzc wrote

The eagle killing will continue until bedbugs is extinct.

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ItsPhayded420 t1_j9xd2jv wrote

Did/does lice not exist for animals ? Genuine question, I've never thought to ask. I know fleas etc. My point being we would have been wearing animal skin/fur and it seems natural for the lice to migrate to us.

Also, fuck bedbugs dude I'd rather have mosquitos, had one experience and I'm still traumatized I will sleep outside fuck those things

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SirRuto t1_j9xee4a wrote

I think I recall every animal species having its own species of mite, sometimes multiple, not too sure about lice but I wouldn't be surprised.

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Exoddity t1_j9xrcwl wrote

There are lice that have their own lice and fleas that have their own fleas.

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bloodmonarch t1_j9xiigq wrote

what are you waiting for then? the eagles aren't going to kill themselves, you know.

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TheMusketDood t1_j9xk2ny wrote

Well the Chiefs already did that so we should be good now.

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iamwizzerd t1_j9xh6nm wrote

Wait really?

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p-d-ball t1_j9xqvt0 wrote

Yeah, DDT was widely used to kill insects. It successfully got rid of malaria in the continental USA to Canada (malaria used to be all the way up to southern Canada), combined with draining swamps, pavement and sewer systems (to drain water away). Mosquitoes returned, but not with malaria, which requires a minimum population to spread.

DDT was also used to stop bedbugs. They are making a comeback partly because it was stopped, but probably also because of growing social inequality - extremely poor people just don't have the means to kill them where they live. And some people are immune to the itchiness and so aren't motivated enough to kill the bedbugs feeding off them.

DDT, it turns out, weakens bird's eggs. So, raptors were dying out all over the place.

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iamwizzerd t1_j9xs98v wrote

Wow thanks

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p-d-ball t1_j9xupj9 wrote

For sure! Want to hear the crazy part? We used to use a product made from chrysanthemum, which is a flower, to kill insects. Massive industry, made in Japan. That industry collapsed with WWII and never recovered, partly because DDT was so cheap.

That kind of sucks, as the flower was obviously natural.

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iamwizzerd t1_j9xwu73 wrote

Dang this is just a whole rabbit hole isn't it?

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p-d-ball t1_j9y4sku wrote

CAPITALISM KILLS EVERYTHING

^(I'm joking for the sensitive bankers out there.)

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Evan_Fishsticks t1_j9xcg1h wrote

Y'all forgetting about the hundreds of other hairy animals we share a planet with? Not to mention the ones we share our house with?

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doyer t1_j9xlmd5 wrote

The ones that affect humans are human specific. Some may end up having some trait that allows them to survive on other animals or vice versa but I wouldn't know about that.

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Silvery-Lithium t1_j9xgd12 wrote

I hate dealing with head lice with a burning passion. I hate body hair as well.

I would not be shaving my head if there were some collective "let's make lice go extinct" thing. Would be more than willing to comb my hair nightly with a lice comb- the only way I successfully dealt with head lice repeatedly as a teen.

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Naamibro t1_j9xsj3q wrote

Public lice live inside the hair follicule, so unlike head lice, if you shave your pubes it does not eradicate the lice.

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spennym t1_ja1g3dr wrote

Do we have the right to choose which animals get to exist and what will disappear? I’d hope someone would play Noah’s ark to save the world’s population of cooties.

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Sure_Monk8528 t1_ja3z8no wrote

Don't forget to pluck all of your eyebrows to take care of those mites too!

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LandlordsR_Parasites t1_j9ws0bf wrote

Do you think lice only attack humans?

Edit: damn

−12

dariamorgandorfferr t1_j9wtmtq wrote

The lice that attack humans, only attack humans, but there are other species that infect other animals. With bed bugs that's not as much of a thing. (Iirc) I'm not a lice expert though entomology wouldn't fit into my class schedule :(

I'm not a parasitologist though lol ianal (Ignore the fact I brought up bed bugs I'm sorry I thought you replied to my other comment for a second)

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daisy0723 t1_j9v155c wrote

That's wonderful.

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Godtiermasturbator t1_j9vlrhb wrote

Won’t someone think of the pubic lice?

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Fazed-and_Confused t1_j9wcfb7 wrote

Don’t worry, I’ve created a safe, nurturing environment for the noble pubic lice.

I grew an entire jungle, just for them.

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FlacidHangDown t1_j9wdeuo wrote

The woke lice these days with their safe spaces

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Phoenix916 t1_j9wo51t wrote

Back in your day it was so much easier to find a nice hairy home of your own and raise a pubic lice family.

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basaltgranite t1_j9x7tk1 wrote

If they're at risk of extinction, will the Endangered Species Act force us to forbid waxing?

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intergalactic_spork t1_j9zwlsh wrote

We need to institute protected habitats for genital lice to save them from extinction!

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cwood1973 OP t1_j9ve700 wrote

Yeah, and they discovered that pubic lice in humans did not descend from human head lice. They descended from gorilla lice... which raises a whole different set of questions.

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seeingeyefrog t1_j9vfkeg wrote

She's a bit hairy, but she's still the gorilla of my dreams.

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OutdatedElements t1_j9vmcju wrote

Silly question, but wouldn’t gorilla’s be far to dangerous and unpredictable to try to breed with?

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humanefly t1_j9vvw90 wrote

I hate that I know this but I think I remember a national geographic article about a "brothel" which included an adolescent, shaved female orangatang somewhere. I feel gross just typing that out

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OutdatedElements t1_j9vwmx1 wrote

Whoa, like a modern brothel? Yikes imagine the waiver you have sign to go in there.

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NickeKass t1_j9wb9g3 wrote

My sad understanding from watching the documentary was that she was trained to just get in position and take it if a male approached her :(. That probably means she was beaten a lot to get to that point or taken at a young age.

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RiotandRuin t1_j9xcqi1 wrote

Every time I start to have faith in humanity again I hear a story like this. I'm glad she's recovering. I hope the men that put her through that get castrated and fed to the lions.

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humanefly t1_j9vxx7o wrote

I dunno really. I don't want to know. I think it was probably in a slum somewhere that orangatangs are found in the wild. There was probably no waiver, you just pay your cash and you takes your ugh chances

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motorhead84 t1_j9x7noq wrote

Yeah these guys are out here fucking orangutans and signing waivers...

They probably donate to their local charities right after

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LotusBlooms t1_j9xofyl wrote

I feel like this would be relevant to Dave Chappelle’s interests!

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ffnnhhw t1_j9vxbg5 wrote

you don't have to breed with them

they could've caught that sleeping in their nest

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bloodmonarch t1_j9wwnjj wrote

There is only 1 reason why anyone would be caught sleeping in a gorilla nest....

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sadnessnmusic t1_j9yudg2 wrote

I know i was born in the wrong generation. Our cavemen ancestors were piping monkeys and gorillas shit must've been so crazy then. Just imagine them right gorilla cheeks bro..

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LipTrev t1_j9x39yl wrote

Humans have as much hair as any other great ape.

>humans are not really hairless at all. Per square centimetre, human skin has as many hair follicles as that of other great apes. The difference is not in the number, but in the fineness of the hair that grows from those follicles.

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SocksOnHands t1_j9v4j6m wrote

I guess when you are studying lice, it's a good time to lose your body hair. Those things are gross. (Wording)

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greenappletree t1_j9uzx3b wrote

TIL there is a difference in lice, yikes. But wow that is a loooong time

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oxero t1_j9vjsge wrote

Yep, iirc there is a Myth Buster episode that did something like set three types of lice (head hair, body hair, and pubic hair I think) and raced them for science.

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BrotherGreed t1_j9vnfnt wrote

TIL clothing lice is a thing

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Due_Platypus_3913 t1_j9wlxx8 wrote

So our ancestors survived the first ice age(or two?) with NO CLOTHES?!?Yikes!Now that’s tough!

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ZhouDa t1_j9wp40v wrote

If we were still in Africa at that time it wouldn't have been that difficult, especially if we had more hair/fur than we do now. I think only South Africa had glaciated during the last ice age.

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Swedish-Butt-Whistle t1_j9x3q5u wrote

We discovered fire long before that, so we were fine. It took many generations to lose our body hair as we adapted to being able to create our own heat sources.

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INTHEMIDSTOFLIONS t1_j9xgmtp wrote

We’re still living in an ice age right now.

Ice Age doesn’t mean eternal winter, it just means the earth’s temperatures have dropped below average for a long period of time, allowing for glacial sheets to form. A difference of 4 degrees C can be an iced age.

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/whats-coldest-earths-ever-been

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SkriVanTek t1_j9xx2zi wrote

iirc ice age is a period with ice covered poles

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_corleone_x t1_j9xlak8 wrote

TIL that's what Ice Age means

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laprawnicon t1_j9xr18l wrote

Thats not right either, the only requirement is the existence of polar ice caps, or significant glaciation and ice sheets. Similar but not the same

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TerribleIdea27 t1_j9vr2my wrote

The reason for this wide range is the fact that you can't see in DNA how old it is, you need to combine all different kinds of data and make educated guesses. You can't just say there's x mutations so there's y times x years divergence between these two lines

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Teknicsrx7 t1_j9x2m7j wrote

I find myself randomly wondering what was the first type of clothing ever made. Was it shoes, hat, pants (leg covering) or shirt (top covering)? I lean towards shoes, but a hat would be so easy so it could be that, but then covering your sensitive areas is obviously key, I wish we know the answer one day somehow.

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SteamworksMLP t1_j9xfxzh wrote

I'd say a cloak. They're incredibly easy to make and cover most of the body easily.

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slightly2spooked t1_j9y115v wrote

IIRC the oldest piece of clothing that we’ve found is a sock. Don’t quote me though.

Edit: I was wrong! The sock is 1,700 years old, the oldest item ever found is a linen dress made 5,000 years ago.

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probably-theasshole t1_j9xkna6 wrote

If looking at our closest relatives it's a hat or umbrella. Which makes sense we had to know how to make some sort of shelter and a hat is just a very small roofed shelter ye put on your head.

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BrokenEye3 t1_j9vmewu wrote

There are clothing lice?

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Royal-Doggie t1_j9v3edb wrote

and since then it went downhill

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BrokenEye3 t1_j9vmi7w wrote

Creating the universe was the first mistake

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humanefly t1_j9vw57y wrote

This god entity is going to have to answer a lot of questions, when we meet

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Amerlis t1_j9x2kg3 wrote

A lot of people are still very upset about that.

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Harvin t1_j9zjcqd wrote

It's been widely regarded as a bad move.

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wasit-worthit t1_j9wvdog wrote

They said on their electronic device and from the safety of their warm and well stocked home.

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soumyeah2 t1_j9wby2d wrote

This headline is a bit confusing, is there a better way to make clear that the "because" is linked to scientists believing rather than people wearing clothes?

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Elite_Jackalope t1_j9wqiqj wrote

TIL scientists believe people started wearing clothes between 83k and 170k years ago, because that's which is when clothing lice diverged from head lice.

I’m no copy editor, but I do think this reads a little easier.

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Evernight2021 t1_j9wkdgy wrote

It's wild to me that they've found lice that old intact to study

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Alexis_J_M t1_j9wrpqx wrote

They don't need old lice, they look at existing lice and build out probable family trees, based on things like mutation rates in various parts of louse DNA.

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Alexell t1_j9x8ula wrote

How did they get the cameras in space for interstellar

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culturedgoat t1_j9wwd10 wrote

And yet they know nothing of why I stopped wearing clothes around 3 years ago…

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aheadwarp9 t1_j9xfago wrote

TIL there are "clothing lice"

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doomgiver98 t1_j9x5d2w wrote

That's a large range of dates.

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Edge_of_the_Wall t1_j9xpv6c wrote

As u/terribleidea27 mentioned, the reason for this wide range is the fact that you can’t see in DNA how old it is, you need to combine all different kinds of data and make educated guesses. You can’t just say there’s x mutations so there’s y times x years divergence between these two lines.

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vaguelyambiguous1 t1_j9xdc9u wrote

Took me 170k years to realise that clothing and head lice were different.

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bodhiseppuku t1_j9xib9b wrote

Head lice... Crotch lice... Clothing lice?

Good time to be a louse .

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goinmobile2030 t1_j9yceh9 wrote

Also, the approximate dare of birth for Tommy Hilfiger.

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Zedo1989 t1_j9zgwzx wrote

The first person on earth was conscious, intelligent and educated, and the first person to wear clothes.

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R4G t1_j9zr7vh wrote

Do you happen to be reading The Social Leap by Bill von Hippel?

1

InkOrganizer t1_j9wesjn wrote

Which side do clothing made of hide and fur belong to I wonder.

0

Monkzeng t1_j9wuckv wrote

Humanities greatest mistake

0

OsamaBinFuckin t1_j9w5n68 wrote

Sounds dumb, I think its much more logical that it started with one cover and then another to protect skin and valuable parts.

−8

NewCanadianMTurker t1_j9v4yuk wrote

"between 83k and 170k years ago" isn't very specific.

Also, this seems like a question that can be better answered by historians than by scientists.

−58

dmart444 t1_j9v5thl wrote

what do you think "prehistoric" means?

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NewCanadianMTurker t1_j9v61n0 wrote

Good point. It would be better to ask a prehistorian. Or maybe even an archeologist.

−35

idiotcosmonaut t1_j9vw0b1 wrote

when's the last time you came across a 100K-year-old pair of pants?

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NewCanadianMTurker t1_j9vw7d9 wrote

I'd imagine there would be fossilized evidence somewhere in the world.

−29

BoxingSoup t1_j9w5o4q wrote

You want us to find... Fossilized pants?

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NewCanadianMTurker t1_j9w5xs8 wrote

Yes. I'd assume 'pants' back then were made of animal skin and there have been numerous animal skin fossils found around the world.

−7

idiotcosmonaut t1_j9w21os wrote

if there is, we haven't found it yet, because very specific conditions have to be met for clothing to survive millennia of decay and many of them are dependent on chance

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Niosus t1_j9v7v9m wrote

The data is what it is. If the data only supports a fairly wide range of ages, they can only report it as is. Future research is likely to narrow things down further.

And honestly, I think it's quite a reasonable range. That age range means that we only started wearing clothes after we became modern humans. There are many hundreds of thousands up to a few million years of hominids that came before that. It's not super precise, but it's pretty impressive that they managed to figure it out at all. If you read the abstract, you'll see that previous research only managed to narrow things down to between 40k and 3 million years ago. The new research is about 30x more precise. That puts the significance of this into context, doesn't it?

Finally, if you think science is not important or useful for historians, I'd urge you to look into the methods they use to figure things out. Radiometric dating, genetic sequencing to determine ancestry, anatomy, geology, climate science, plate tectonics, and so many more fields... It all comes together to interpret the tiny nuggets of evidence that still exists, into a bigger picture of what likely happened. Every field provides a fresh perspective on the evidence that can corroborate or refute hypotheses. Without the scientists, we would get so much less information from the artifacts we find.

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FlacidHangDown t1_j9wdpmc wrote

Over millions of years of time an estimate of 83k-170k years is pretty specific

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NewCanadianMTurker t1_j9we2uy wrote

"Modern humans originated in Africa within the past 200,000 years"

https://www.yourgenome.org/stories/evolution-of-modern-humans/

True, if it was out of millions of years it would be decently precise, but it seems it was out of 200k.

−1

Minkelz t1_j9wua0c wrote

Why do you think clothes would be limited to modern humans?

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NewCanadianMTurker t1_j9wv0pe wrote

Prior to modern humans was Homo erectus. If by people the scientists were including Homo erectus then they are just flat-out wrong because there has been evidence of them wearing clothing much earlier than 170k years ago.

""Peking Man," a human ancestor who lived in China between roughly 200,000 and 750,000 years ago, was a wood-working, fire-using, spear-hafting hominid who, mysteriously, liked to drill holes into objects for unknown reasons.

And, yes, these hominids, a form of Homo erectus, appear to have been quite meticulous about their clothing, using stone tools to soften and depress animal hides."

https://www.livescience.com/25887-peking-man-hominid-fashion.html

1