hoarding
Explanation
This comic takes the phenomenon of "buried treasure" and reframes it through the lens of behavioral psychology.
In the first panel, a character says: "Did you know that the frequency of so-called 'buried treasure' in the historical record is non-random?" Another asks: "What?" The first explains: "Historians have found it correlates pretty well with expected levels of room... ephemera."
In the second panel, the explanation continues: "You see, buried 'treasure' was, historically, often just people hoarding stuff — stashing valuables in holes. It's not actually 'buried treasure.' When people say 'oh they found buried treasure,' what they actually found was evidence that someone was living with too much stuff and had to hide it."
The final panel delivers the punchline: "I'll explain it to the younger generation: Imagine if your DoorDash orders were permanent." To which someone responds: "Imagine? Our times were hard."
The comic reframes the romantic concept of buried treasure as essentially ancient hoarding behavior. Rather than pirates and adventurers deliberately hiding magnificent chests of gold, the historical reality is often more mundane — people accumulating more possessions than they could store and burying the overflow. The joke connects this to modern consumer culture and the accumulation of stuff, with the DoorDash comparison updating the concept for a younger audience. The final line suggests that modern generations may already be living the hoarding reality, just with delivery food containers instead of coins and jewels.