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spot-on

2023-12-02 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
spot-on
Votey panel for spot-on
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

This comic imagines what it would look like if archaeological articles took a different approach than usual. The setup asks: "How come articles about archaeology never do this, just for balance?" It then presents a fake article excerpt that reads: "The discovery suggests culture at this location was substantially simpler and dumber than researchers previously believed. Textbooks have heretofore portrayed these people's lives as rich and intricate but they appear now to be repetitive and uncomplex. 'People have stereotypes about this period and they are just absolutely spot-on,' said one scholar."

The humor lies in the contrast with how archaeological findings are typically reported. Real archaeology articles almost always frame discoveries as revealing that ancient peoples were more sophisticated, complex, and advanced than previously thought. Weinersmith jokes that for "balance," we should occasionally see the opposite conclusion -- that sometimes ancient people really were as simple as the stereotypes suggest. It's a playful jab at the predictable formula of pop-science archaeology reporting.

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