5 Historical Treasures That Are Accidental Comedy Gold

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The Poop Of A Hunter-Gatherer Who Ate A Whole Rattlesnake

Back in the 1960s, archaeologists collected hundreds of "coprolites" (read: fossilized poop) from a 1,500-year-old rock shelter in Lower Pecos, Texas -- an area that had long ago played host to tribes of hunter-gatherers. In a scene that echoed the ending of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, they then left these time turds to rot in a storage closet for the next half-century.

Paramount Pictures"Someone else can deal with this crap, literally."

When archaeologists at Texas A&M recently reopened the collection, they didn't expect to find anything of note hiding away amongst these nostalgic #2s. They were wrong.

When the team broke open a sample that they unimpressively described as a "really skinny cow pat," they found themselves staring at a rattlesnake fang -- one that looked just as fresh (and just as lethal) as any modern-day counterpart.

And then they found the ribs.

And then the vertebrae.

And then the scales.

The team soon realized that they hadn't found the poop of a hunter-gatherer with a terrible taste in toothpicks; they'd found the poop of a hunter-gatherer who, for whatever reason, woke up one morning and decided to eat an entire rattlesnake. We can't say for sure whether they survived the ordeal, but they sure did have time to make afterwards, and the scientists didn't find any skeletons nearby curled up in intestinal distress. We guess that's the closest thing to a happy ending this story gets.

E.M. Sonderman, C.A. Dozier, and M.F. SmithProving that even in the Neolithic era, Texans behaved pretty much the same as now.

So what would make someone eat an entire snake, you might wonder? In the case of your mom, $5. In the case of this individual, we have no idea. The best guess anyone can come up with is that it was part of a ritual intended to bring about rainfall, perhaps because the area was stricken by a devastating drought. Honestly? We'd rather take the drought.

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The Infinity Gauntlet Of Saint Teresa

3

An Ancient Bolivian Drug Lab

In 2008, archaeologists working at Cueva del Chileno in Bolivia uncovered a 1,000-year-old burial site hiding inside a mountainside cave. The grave was later found to be vacant (creepy), but the archaeologists didn't go away empty-handed, having also stumbled across a leather bag, which on closer inspection was found to contain everything the previous occupant of the grave would've needed to crash headfirst through the gates of the afterlife.

The bag contained several spatulas -- made of bone, no less -- that would've been used to grind down psychoactive seeds into a fine powder, which would've then been snorted brainwards using the wooden nostril-sized tube that was also found in the bag. As this was a classy operation, they didn't inbibe their drugs off the floor like savages. No, they crushed and snorted their product off two small wooden tablets embedded with gemstones, which is the pre-Columbian equivalent of gold-plating your vape.

Albarracin-Jordan, Et. Al./ Journal of Bolivian Archeology

Albarracin-Jordan, Et. Al./ Journal of Bolivian ArcheologyThey were wrapped in a roughly woven "Legalize It" T-shirt, along with some ceramic Phish CDs.

2

What Blackbeard And His Crew Used To Read For Fun

While studying the wreck of Queen Anne's Revenge -- the scurvy seafaring vessel captained by Blackbeard himself -- archaeologists discovered scraps of paper lodged inside one of the cannons. On its own, this was an amazing find. We don't tend to recover much paper from shipwrecks, on account of how (and stop us if we get too science-y here) water makes it go mushy bye-bye.

1

Sacrificial Guinea Pigs, All Dressed Up With Nowhere To Go

When you think of ancient civilizations performing animal sacrifices, how does that play out in your head? If you're anything like us (and we certainly hope not), there's a guy in robes, a bigass knife, and some kind of lumbering beast like an oxen ... and later a bunch of people wondering why their crops are still failing. ("The 25,0001st cow must be the charm!") The animal sacrifice that we want to talk about, however, isn't like that at all.

While excavating a 16th-century Incan settlement in Peru, archaeologist Lidio Valdez stumbled across the corpses of 100 guinea pigs. He hadn't discovered the ruins of a PetSmart, though. These guinea pigs had been buried alive as a sacrifice intended to bring good fortune to the settlement -- after which their bodies were sealed beneath the floors of several buildings, which we're reasonably sure led to the cutest haunting in history.

The weirdest part, though? These lil' squealers were sent to the afterlife wearing the finest miniature duds the Incas had to offer. On closer inspection, every guinea pig was adorned a necklace/earring combo fashioned from lengths of colored string.

Lidio Valdez/Int'l. Journal of Osteoarchaeology

Lidio Valdez/Int'l. Journal of OsteoarchaeologyThough we doubt that was of much comfort to whichever six-year-old had to send Mr. Whiskers off to appease the sun god.