Archeologists Discover Treasure Trove Of Pre-2003 Pornography On Ancient Laptop
While combing through the ruins of an old, pre-latest-recession era office building yesterday, a team of archeologists in San Francisco unearthed a laptop that dates as far back as circa 2002.
But what really made the find exciting for researchers was the presence of about 85 hours' worth of early 21st century pornographic video on the computer. Although this seems like a small amount to most people today, the team says it's an amazing discovery.
"At this point, some of us were starting to doubt the existence of pornography -- much less computers -- in the period of history that took place six years ago," said Dr. Phillip Hawes, lead researcher on the project to Detect And Tag Any Semblance of 2002 Smut (Project DATASS). "Thanks to this find, we now know that over the course of the year, Pre-iPhone Man was indeed able to download and view a modest amount of pornography -- around the amount that today's average citizen would go through in roughly 10 days' time."
The pornography itself has been described as relatively tame, as humans of that era were still unaware of advanced sexual acts that would later be demonstrated on the internet.
"A lot of what we found involved things most of us today would not even blink twice at -- minor bukkake, some urination, and only a few farm animals," Hawes said. "This was truly the age of innocence in pornography."
Hawes says that he personally had to watch the pornography in private over and over again, partially because the standard definition videos were so difficult to see.
"Early in the year 2002, most television and internet programming was not available in high definition, meaning that people could barely even see what they were watching," he explained. "Often, people would visit each other at their homes, presumably for the purposes of teaming up to try and make sense of the bizarre, blurry shapes on the screens in front of them."
"Barbaric," Hawes said, shaking his head, adding that today, of course, we have almost no need for ever communicating in person.
Archeologists around the world say the discovery bodes well for identifying more ancient civilizations based on pornography strata.
"I would imagine that this method of research [also known as Porno Dating] will only continue in the future," said famed archeologist and pornography enthusiast Thomas Andrew. "We may come to define entire eras based upon popular pornographic phenomenon at the time, such as the Twogirlsonecup Era, the Lemon Party Era, and so on."
Other events thought to have happened in 2002 include:
- The St. Louis Rams participated in the Super Bowl. Modern historians now believe this was an elaborate joke of some kind.
- George W. Bush was the President of the United States, although most Republicans now say they have no recollection of this.
- The boy band 98 Degrees disbanded. Music has never completely recovered.