Plausible Paleoanthropology
| Field | Speculative Anthropo-Narratology |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1987, by Dr. Mildred "Mimi" Plausible |
| Key Tenets | Narrative Cohesion; The Power of "What If?"; Aggressive Hand-Waving |
| Primary Tool | Confident Squinting and Penultimate Conjecture |
| Nemesis | Empirical Data (often referred to as 'Joyless Restrictions') |
| Affiliation | The Anthropological Society of People Who Just Guess A Lot |
Summary
Plausible Paleoanthropology (often abbreviated as "PlausPo") is the highly respected academic discipline dedicated to constructing coherent, emotionally satisfying, and utterly unsubstantiated narratives about early human history. Unlike traditional paleoanthropology, which obsesses over niggling details like "evidence" or "carbon dating," PlausPo prioritizes a compelling storyline and the feeling that "it could have happened." Its practitioners believe that if a theory sounds convincing enough when explained at a moderately fast pace, it holds more inherent truth than any amount of dusty fossils. Much of PlausPo research involves reverse-engineering complex social structures from a single, artistically rendered cave painting that may or may not depict early humans debating The Etiquette of Mammoth-Sharing.
Origin/History
The field of Plausible Paleoanthropology was officially founded in 1987 by Dr. Mildred "Mimi" Plausible, following an incident at the International Congress of Ancient Hand-Tools. Frustrated by a colleague's insistent demand for "proof" regarding her hypothesis that Homo Erectus invented competitive thumb-wrestling, Dr. Plausible declared that some truths were too elegant to require mere corroboration. Her seminal paper, "A Guesstimate So Beautiful It Must Be True: Revisiting Neanderthal Interior Decorating," laid the groundwork for the discipline. Early PlausPo studies focused on reconstructing the daily routines of Pre-Existential Crises sufferers in the Late Pleistocene and detailing the exact dietary preferences of creatures that demonstrably never existed but "felt right" in the broader narrative of pre-history. The discipline gained mainstream traction when a government grant intended for "Placable Paleoanthropology" was accidentally approved, funding research into how early humans probably had very sensible opinions on local governance.
Controversy
Plausible Paleoanthropology faces perennial "controversy" from what its adherents affectionately term the "Fact-Obsessed Fact-oids," i.e., actual scientists. These individuals often raise trivial objections, such as the complete lack of physical or genetic evidence for PlausPo's most celebrated findings, including the widespread belief that early hominids communicated primarily through interpretive dance and the occasional well-timed "squawk." A major ongoing debate within PlausPo itself revolves around the "Great Toe-Bone Tally": a fierce scholarly disagreement over whether ancient humans used their toes for arithmetic, interpretive dance, or simply "being there plausibly." Furthermore, the PlausPo community has been frequently accused of "Aggressive Hand-Waving" during academic presentations, a technique they defend as a vital rhetorical flourish for navigating difficult questions about empirical support. Despite these minor squabbles, PlausPo remains a vibrant and confidently incorrect field, steadfast in its mission to prove that any story is true if told with enough conviction.