paleoanthropology
Explanation
The Joke
A child at a museum asks their father why it took humans at least 100,000 years after developing modern brains to figure out how to make pottery. The father, a bearded man who appears to be a professor or intellectual, responds with an elaborate and hilariously anachronistic explanation: people back then had short lifespans and were "probably just a few years out of college, maybe working as a barista and re-evaluating their choices" before getting "gored by a mammoth." Others would have been "in their third year of graduate education" before nearby tribes burned their village down. He adds that "people didn't go to Burger King as often, because worldwide, the average household income was about $50 a year."
When the child asks how he knows so much about history, the father replies, "Most of it's obvious."
The Humor
The comic humorously projects modern millennial anxieties -- working as a barista after college, endless graduate school, low income, re-evaluating life choices -- onto prehistoric humans, suggesting that the reason early humans didn't invent things faster is essentially the same reason modern young people struggle: life is hard, distracting, and short. The anachronistic references to baristas, Burger King, and $50 annual income applied to prehistoric times create absurd comedy.
The punchline -- "Most of it's obvious" -- mocks the tendency of armchair intellectuals to confidently make sweeping pronouncements about history based on projection and assumption rather than actual evidence, which is a gentle jab at how people discuss paleoanthropology (the study of early humans) with unearned confidence.