Hey, what is up YouTube, welcome back to another Minecraft video. Today, we are exploring the new update, which includes TAPHONOMY. And of course, it wouldn’t be a Minecraft video without some more digging, but we’ll get back to that in a little bit.
Basically, taphonomy is the study of what happens to bones after their original owners kick it. It’s kind of like CarFax for archaeologists. So we spent the morning looking specifically for signs of carnivore damage and damage caused by stone tools to try and determine A) the level of competition in the area 1.5 million years ago, and B) how active hominins were in the area. There was a point where I was pretty certain I’d found a bone which had been sliced by a stone took, only to find out that it was just stepped on by someone in our group in a way that sort of looked like a stone tool. But those ten minutes of belief were a lot of fun. And at any rate, we found a ton of evidence of carnivore damage on the bones which was almost just as cool.
McKenna with her bones because I couldn’t find any pictures of myself. Photo cred to Carina
After we collected our bones, I did my second and final presentation, which also happened to be my last presentation in all of college. That is quickly becoming an unavoidable fact, but nevertheless, I choose to ignore it. It was especially easy to ignore because soon after my presentation, we went out to dig again, and so for at least an hour and a half I didn’t have to think about anything but moving dirt. Genuinely it’s the most content I’ve been in a long time. I think I might buy a sandbox and have someone bury my rock collection in it just to recreate that feeling.
Anyways. Tomorrow we depart and I fear the future will be much less avoidable. But for now, I’m just going to sleep. Thanks for watching and don’t forget to drop a like xoxo
