As a child, I remember going to the Pittsburgh Museum of Natural History for class trips. We usually had a tour guide who would let us touch an arrowhead or a spear or something before describing how these fossils and artifacts helped scientists of today learn about our ancestors. One year we were fortunate enough to hold a crudely-made cutting tool: a rock with one edge sharpened by another rock. I remember we each impatiently stood waiting our turn while someone's mom regulated the procedure -- the selfish kids wanted to grab it out of their neighbors' hands too early and didn't want to hand it over when it was time for the next in line.
I can't blame them. It was an exciting thing, that rock. Some grunting hairy guy had used it to pry the skin off of a wooly mammoth. Gross! Cool! How old is this again? Are these available in the gift shop? Can we try to skin Joey's arm during the lunch break?
I doubt we would have been as eager to hold that artifact if it had been a piece of poop. However, that's what has the scientific community truly excited right now: a piece of caveman poop has been found in Oregon that predates any other human evidence in North America by over one thousand years.
Neat? Cool? Do they sell these in the gift shop? No, no, and NO.
Researchers from the Universities of Oregon and Copenhagen found a mass of fossilized human feces in Paisley Caves, located in the south-central part of Oregon. As the New York Times reports, "Few artifacts were found at the cave, the discovery team reported, which suggested that the occupants' visits were brief." Could be that a single Shameful Shitter ducked into a cave for a moment's privacy and deposited one of the most important poops in human history.
The scientists extracted the DNA in the droppings and determined it to be unique to present-day Native Americans. Because it was found to hold two ancient Asian genetic strains specific to Native North Americans, and because it was carbon-dated to be approximately 14,340 years old, we'll now have to rewrite the books. 14,340 years? That means this little piece of poo sets the immigration of the first North Americans one thousand years earlier than we'd originally believed.
What an important little turd.
