When I was a kid we found some berries in a field, but we didn’t know if they were safe to eat. So we asked our parents, they didn’t know either, they told us to ask our great-grandmother since she was super old she might know what the berries were.
So we took the berries to grandma and she looked at them for a second and then immediately ate the all of them.
“So… they’re safe to eat?”
“Come back tomorrow, if I’m still alive they are safe to eat”
She reasoned that she was old and if the berries killed her it wouldn’t be a big deal. But if one of us kids died it would be a huge tragedy.
So from that experience, I’m guessing it wasn’t children that tested if things were safe to eat it was probably the elderly.
I get the feeling that ‘getting old enough to be less functionally important to the group’ wasn’t a common phenomenon in the time period depicted in the meme, but I also think your logic tracks.
What? You’re basically answering your own question: we ‘invented dogs’ when we domesticated wolves. Before that date there were no dogs in existence.
It was not one exact date ofcourse, it is a gradual proces. Still (a quick look at Wikipedia tells me) dogs have only been around for tens of thousands of years (17.500 - 40.000 years is the range I can find). Which is still not that long. People had definitely tried out mushrooms before that.
They used children and dogs for sure
When I was a kid we found some berries in a field, but we didn’t know if they were safe to eat. So we asked our parents, they didn’t know either, they told us to ask our great-grandmother since she was super old she might know what the berries were.
So we took the berries to grandma and she looked at them for a second and then immediately ate the all of them.
“So… they’re safe to eat?”
“Come back tomorrow, if I’m still alive they are safe to eat”
She reasoned that she was old and if the berries killed her it wouldn’t be a big deal. But if one of us kids died it would be a huge tragedy.
So from that experience, I’m guessing it wasn’t children that tested if things were safe to eat it was probably the elderly.
I get the feeling that ‘getting old enough to be less functionally important to the group’ wasn’t a common phenomenon in the time period depicted in the meme, but I also think your logic tracks.
They were probably testing the mushrooms since before dogs existed
…before dogs existed? Do you think there was some date where we invented dogs? Wolfs have always been around, and all dogs are is domesticated wolfs.
What? You’re basically answering your own question: we ‘invented dogs’ when we domesticated wolves. Before that date there were no dogs in existence.
It was not one exact date ofcourse, it is a gradual proces. Still (a quick look at Wikipedia tells me) dogs have only been around for tens of thousands of years (17.500 - 40.000 years is the range I can find). Which is still not that long. People had definitely tried out mushrooms before that.
*wolves
Children at a certain age keep putting everything in their mouth and trying to eat it. It’s wonder any used to survive.