Tumblr thread, one user says that archeologists identify human remains by taste. A second user points out that this is not true, bone is identified as not a normal rock by touching it to your tongue and seeing if it sticks. If it does then bone.
Third user shares a poem they wrote: mai nam is jane and wen i dig i fynde some roks both smol and big i put my tung upon the stone for science yes i lik the bone
4th user is an archeologist and is crying laughing with a bunch of other archeologists and they’re going to have shirts made with the poem.
One of my favorite archaeology stories comes from a Reddit AMA waaay back over a decade ago, there was this girl who was on an archaeological expedition somewhere in the Middle East and they had unearthed a bunch of ancient honey jars. Honey, famously, never goes bad, and their professor said that if anyone wanted to try some, they could. Most didn’t, but she did- lo and behold, tasted very much like normal honey.
Months later when they were back in the states they had performed some tests on the honey and realized that these jars had originally contained stillborn fetuses, a now known practice, which had dissolved into the honey over the millennia. So she had eaten human fetus honey.
I know it sounds made up but she was a legit archaeologist and could back it up with names and dates and shit, though I’m hazy on the details.
Not just archies, like another commentator points out, but Geo’s and pedologists too
In soil science we sometimes put soil in our mouth to determine between silt and clay or silt and fine sand
Isn’t that a health risk?
They ate a lot of dirt as kids, built up their immune system
…I feel quite hungry…
Conceivably you could do this with any similar skin type to a tongue so wet nipples and genitals would also stick to bone. Boners are the unlikely but accurate technical term for the application.
So you want me to put dicks in my mouth? Alright, you have me convinced. Science needs me!
You can also tell a claystone from a siltstone by rubbing it against your teeth! If it rubs smoothly without friction then it’s a claystone. If it feels abrasive then it’s a siltstone.
I find a stone
But is it clay?
Or is it silt?
I cannot say.
I’ll rub a bit
Just on my tooth,
If tooth falls out
I’ll know the truth.Maybe you think
My methods strange,
Maybe you think
They cause me pain.
But I’ll keep rocks
All in my fist:
Not odd to me;
I’m geologist.Better don’t tell your dentist
This was a lot of my degree. We licked everything. Still do.
Mouthfeel is an incredible sense. Babies learn what the world is by pushing handfuls of it into their mouths. Texture, taste, angularity, porosity, density, degree of lithificaton… instantly.
*edit: we did not all lick things. There are two distinct schools of thought, and not a lot of fence sitters.
I would absolutely be on the lick things team. I use my mouth as a tool all the time.
This post sounds incredibly weird.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
You can also differentiate between halite and sylvite using your tongue! Sylvite has a more tingly, “spicier” feeling and taste, whereas halite is simply salt.
Always great to see scientists with a sense of humor.
Pretty sure that’s most of them
There’s no other way to test to see if it’s bone?
If you have two you can try to see if they’ll rattle
Thank Mr Skeltal
Rattle 'em, boys!
