Also mistaken for fulgurite by the more naturalistically minded, apparently. Maybe most common in the Nordics, based on viking references?
Additional links:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/100810-thor-thors-hammer-viking-graves-thunderstones-science
https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukonvaaja [Finnish]
It’s amazing to put into perspective how long both bronze and stone ages really took, especially compared to modernity. Human brains are not good at imagining large quantities or intervals, so it was all kinda smushed up into a folder labeled “past” in my head
To give some numbers, the last period of the stone age (Neolithic) lasted around 2000 years and the bronze age around 1600 years. No wonder they “forgot” what the stone age tools were.
Someone pointed a temperature gun (for Covid testing) at me and for a brief moment, I forgot what they were.
When they’re uncovered 100 years from now, they’ll think we shot lasers at each other.
Don’t we though?
Sidney Harris taught me otherwise.
EDIT: I just saw he turned 91 yesterday. Happy Birthday, Mr. Harris!
Kurzgesagt did this video where they crammed all of Earth’s history in an hour. Basically you look at a barren wasteland for most of the time until life finally goes macroscopic and then all of humanity happens in less than a second
I sat through the whole thing and it’s still incomprehensible
It’s gotten so fast that we now see significant changes in our lifetimes - cultural, technology, climate. For most of human history, it took many generations for any real change to occur.
Japan might be the record holder for fastest significant change, though. Feudalism to a modern industrial economy in a few decades.
Please. The USSR industrialization speed run is unsurpassed. Peasants to the first artificial satellite in 40 years. Also, parts of Russia are still completely undeveloped today!
Japan did it twice. They closed their borders between bouts of rapid modernizations.