Australia could become the first country to abandon physical money ● The oldest phallic images in the world have been discovered ● It was wars that influenced the dynamics of Neolithic populations

Australia could become the first country to abandon physical money

Until the 80s of the last century, when cards were just beginning to be widely used, more than 85% of non-cash transactions were carried out using bearer checks. But the percentage of those who still use such checks decreased to about 0.1%.

In fact, according to a recent survey by the Reserve Bank of Australia, of the approximately 13,000 transactions made in a week by 1,000 bank customers, only 17 still involved checks. And this is a clear proof that their era is a little behind. As a result, the Australian government has already announced that it will follow the example of New Zealand, Denmark and the Netherlands and permanently close the check system. That is, until 2030.

Even cash settlements are not what they used to be. And this despite the fact that at the peak, in 2007, 69% of payments were made in cash. In 2019, this percentage fell to only 27%. And after the pandemic period, in 2022, it barely reached 13%. At this rate, according to the Australian authorities, it will not take more than ten years for cash payments to disappear completely.

In fact, Antipos officials say, they don’t even need to block cash transactions like they would with checks. Simply put, everything will work itself out, because in the near future no one will use them anyway. As we all know, cards have become the main form of payment, and fewer and fewer people prefer to carry a wallet full of notes and, especially, coins.

And all this work would also bring some profits, because printing money costs money. Each Australian banknote, regardless of denomination, costs about 32 cents to produce. Price includes coins. Yes, even those that cost less.

And this means that the state, when it produced new money, was actually at a loss. Not to mention insuring cash reserves in banks, moving them as needed, replacing damaged banknotes, etc. All this meant certain costs, which, taken together, were quite significant.

In summary, this is the future that awaits us all. Give money in the collection, because after a while the collectors will beat them! You can even get a good amount in exchange for them. Electronic amount, obviously, but who cares?

The oldest phallic images in the world have been discovered

Ladies and gentlemen, good luck! An international team of archaeologists has just announced in the prestigious journal Science the discovery of what appears to be the oldest depiction of a penis. And the good stuff doesn’t end there, don’t get excited just yet because we have to tell you his age too! Somewhere between 39,500 and 42,000! Now you can enjoy.

While you pop open the champagne, note that not all scientists agree with the hypothesis of the authors of the study. This is because the artifact in question, which is only four centimeters long, looks quite strange and could look like anything. This is not a very clear representation.

However, the team that made the discovery in Mongolia says it’s all in the details. Some incisions and traces of human intervention are clearly visible on the rock. The authors, judging by the age of the object, which falls on the border of the Upper Paleolithic, are representatives of the species Homo sapiens.

Going back to the incisions, one of them runs the length of the artifact, while there is another at the top that resembles the opening of the urethra. The archaeologists in question also say that this pattern can also be found in recent Paleolithic creations, such as another 20-centimeter-long phallic object discovered in Germany and dated to 28,000 years ago. Basically, the cuts will be similar.

Obviously, the possibility remains that the artifact in question had a different purpose. For example, being an attacker. It can also be a simple blank, an object that was not completed for various reasons. But no, who are we to spoil people’s joy?

It was wars that influenced the dynamics of Neolithic populations

The Neolithic is a period marked, among other things, by population dynamics, which are often marked by booms, but also sharp declines. Sometimes there are even cases of total decline, when entire regions are suddenly abandoned and traces of the previous culture suddenly disappear. A team consisting of Austrian, German and American specialists tried to answer exactly this question related to the cycles and dynamics of Neolithic populations.

According to their study, published in the journal Nature, it was not climate change, as often assumed, that caused the sudden changes among Neolithic populations. To reach this conclusion, the experts created several computer models that ran different scenarios, all of them based on the two main factors under discussion: climate change and social conflicts.

In the models created by the authors of the study, the entire European territory was considered, a territory that was divided into small areas marked by the existence of villages or small communities. Even this was an innovation, since until now in simulations researchers preferred to divide Europe into large areas depending on the influence of each supposed culture.

Recent simulations have shown without exception that the climatic changes that occurred between 9000 B.C. – 5000 BC cannot fully explain the major changes observed at the archaeological level. Instead, the hypothesis of bloody conflicts between communities best fits what we currently know about these communities.

In conclusion, the Neolithic was a much more tumultuous period than we might have imagined, a period marked by frequent conflicts between the populations of the time. Moreover, there would be a real domino effect, where a small community would not only suffer from its neighbors, but would even suffer from the actions of others towards its neighbors. And in such a world, war and the complete extinction of some populations seem to have been the general rules.

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