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Why do people always ask if I've dug up dinosaurs at parties?
I was at a friend's get-together last week and someone asked if I ever come across dinosaur bones in my work. I had to explain, again, that archaeology is about human history, not dinosaurs. Then this guy started arguing about how he saw a documentary on Jurassic Park, lmao. It's so awkward when people mix up paleontology and archaeology. I mean, come on, a little basic knowledge would help. Now I just nod and change the subject to avoid the whole mess.
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cole9941mo agoMost Upvoted
Keep a simple analogy ready, like comparing a T-Rex to a Roman coin. It shuts down the dinosaur confusion fast without making anyone feel dumb. Saves you from the whole awkward documentary debate every time.
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dakota_burns831mo ago
Totally get what @cole994 is saying with the T-Rex and coin thing. I've used the pyramids myself, telling people Cleopatra lived closer to the first iPhone than to those being built. Another good one is woolly mammoths walking around while the Great Pyramid was already ancient. It just makes the scale click without being a lecture, you know? Saves a ton of time.
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graydavis1mo ago
That pyramid example from @dakota_burns83 is solid for jolting people's sense of time. You could also hit them with the fact that when the last woolly mammoth died, the Great Pyramid was already older to them than the Roman Empire is to us. Sometimes a weird picture helps, like a tired Egyptian worker finding a fossil and just having no idea what it even was. A trilobite in a Pharaoh's pocket hits different than just saying "different time periods.
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