Move over, Pony Express. Archaeologists have just uncovered evidence that Neanderthals were the true pioneers of mail delivery, but with a twist that might have confused even your local postal worker. Instead of bringing messages to each other, these clever cave dwellers invented the world’s first central mail pickup system, located in a conveniently drafty cave.
According to ancient records (mainly a suspiciously organized pile of mammoth-hide envelopes), communication was taken very seriously. If you wanted to know what your cousin Gruk had been up to lately, all you had to do was trudge over to the cave and look for your name on a suspiciously hairy letter. Cave drawings on the walls even served as the earliest known PO Boxes, each featuring the proud stick figure likenesses of Neanderthal families.
Mail “carriers” in this system had one job: to point at the big heap of bison fur and mammoth hide postal paraphernalia at the cave entrance. If you accidentally grabbed your neighbor’s mammoth tax statement, that was just the price of prehistoric convenience. Lost postage? Not to worry, the “dead letter pile” was also the snack pile.
Door-to-door delivery was apparently just too much trouble for our Neanderthal ancestors. Why risk running into a sabertooth cat when you could just make everyone come to one central, mostly-safe, bear-occupied cave? It may not have been efficient, but it was certainly a great way to stay social (and share mammoth jerky samples).
Little did early humans know, this mail cave was not without its quirks. Sometimes messages arrived late, either stuck under a pile of rocks or used as a makeshift hat by the local shaman. If your important invitation to the next big hunt was smudged with charcoal fingerprints, that was simply proof it was authentic.
Historians now believe that the tradition of waiting in line at the post office can actually be traced back to these long-ago cave queues. If you think waiting for the next available counter is bad, try waiting behind a woolly rhinoceros with a message from its estranged cousin.
Next time you check your mailbox and find it empty, remember the Neanderthals. They invented mail inconvenience long before it was cool.
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