Nothing of the bee remains, but we know it existed from the shape of this flower. It’s an idea of what the female bee looked like to the male bee… as interpreted by a plant.
Fossils
Submitted 6 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/40ea39aa-2120-4465-9db6-87e161e9697b.jpeg
Comments
Hupf@feddit.de 5 months ago
NewAgeOldPerson@lemmy.world 5 months ago
One of my favorite xkcd’s
dogsnest@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Based.
Carved in stone.
OpenStars@discuss.online 6 months ago
At least, older than our words.
kwomp2@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Yeah nice, but also no not quite… Before humans and before words there was no poetry. Just stones and bugs and stuff. It needed humans cognitive capacity to emerge/create (not discover) aesthetic categories, like poetry
Sorry for fact checking your poetic meme, but it made this claim that might be understood factual and unreflected mystification of nature is still quite a thing
dohpaz42@lemmy.world 6 months ago
By your logic, human existence is the point in which things exist. And by that logic, fossils wouldn’t exist. Nor dinosaurs, the earth, or even the beginning of the universe (however you believe it came to be).
I would argue that poetry is more than the mere written word arranged in a rhyming schema. It extends to being anything that sparks creativity of the mind. e.g., The colors of the sunset reflecting off the surface of a pond that ripples from an animal jumping on the water. Surely that existed before humans?
Now I would certainly agree that it took humans to best articulate it by being able to write (or otherwise convey) these moments into more than a fleeting moment in their memory.
kwomp2@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
No. By my logic human existence is the point in wich poetry exists.
Yes, we almost agree, I just argue: Poetry is not what sparks. It’s the spark.
Sunrise exists: no poetry. Sunrise sparks someones mind: poetry.
notabot@lemm.ee 5 months ago
That argument seems to boil down to whether or not a thing can be a member of a category before that category is described and named by humans, or presumably any sentient entity. You seem to ne arguing that it can’t, I would say it can.
Considered anything that existed before humans. Let’s take dinosaurs. They existed, but before humans came up with the name ‘dinosaur’ were they dinosaurs? I would say that the category existed even though there were no humans to describe it. Likewise with aesthetic categories, the entity exists and either fits within the category, or it does not, even if the category has not been described by humans. Thus, if you consider fossils to be poetry, they are, indeed, poetry older than words.
If we’re nit picking the meme I would instead take issue with the concept of fossils being a memory of bones. We have fossils of plants, boneless creatures and even soft tissue from creatures with bones. Despite that, I think the meme is reasonable enough, and a fair way to look at things.
kwomp2@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Okay I dont know much about dino categorization, but let’s say: The category “dinosaur” is a sum of descriptions of objective properties of dinosaurs and their relation to other species’ properties (idk, no milk, thus no mammal…). Those properties and relations existed as the dinosaur existed. So I would agree: to that extend the categories existed, without us.
Let’s say the category “poetry” describes a relational phenomenon that occurs when a combination of words or an arrangement of things (sunset, fossils) sparks an aesthetic experience.
This is not just discovered and described by humans, but it can exclusively happen when humans are present. As with dinos: the category “poetry” didn’ exist before us. The difference I’m all about: What the category describes also did’t exist before humans. Yes, there were fossils, but they alone would have never evolved to be a part of poetry without humans, the way dinos were dinos without humans.
kwomp2@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
To the haters: I dont question your experience of (this) poetry. That I would be sorry for.
I questions the hypostasis, that is declaring your experience of the thing as a property of the thing.
AffineConnection@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Sometimes, original material does survive fossilization.
MeDuViNoX@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Neolithic, but not too neo; mostly just lithic.
jpreston2005@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Wait, what does this mean? I genuinely thought fossils were the bones, preserved through lack of oxygen
fossilesque@mander.xyz 5 months ago
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zBzDfvvdgA
Fun facts, we know next to nothing about dinosaurs that lived in jungles or mountains due to preservation conditions. They just disappear and do not get buried fast enough. We know the most about wetland dinos because those tend to have better conditions (e.g. bogs) to preserve things.
OpenStars@discuss.online 5 months ago
Humanity’s closest living relatives, the Chimpanzees, live in forests. They diverged from our lineage 6.5-7.5 million years ago, and there are almost no fossils for them. Except for a statistical fluke, someone studying solely the fossil record could be excused for thinking that they never existed at all… but they do!
Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
Love me a good bog…
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Hey, that’s not fun!
lauha@lemmy.one 5 months ago
Petrified forest are not trees that turned to stone. Peteified forests are trees covered in mud or something that hardened, then tree rotted away and the hollow(in the mold of the tree) was filled in by another type of rock, creating a something that looks like a peteified tree.
TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 5 months ago
Oddly we needed to create the idea of poetry first to make the metaphor
MetalMartin@lemmy.myserv.one 5 months ago
That’s really good!
hperrin@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Technically a fossil is any remnant of an animal or its activities, not just petrified bones.
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fossil
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
Of course it’s company policy never to, imply ownership in the event of a dildo… always use the indefinite article “a” dildo, never “your” dildo.
NewAgeOldPerson@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It’s okay. Nine times out of ten, it’s an electric razor.
Lommy@lemmy.world 5 months ago
This had me in stitches. Thanks :D
hperrin@lemmy.world 5 months ago
If I’m gonna be a pedant, I’ve gotta take it to the extreme.
Daft_ish@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Omg the pedentry needs to stop. Specific to what ever fossil is being refer too.