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The 2007 sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, has a theme song that was penned and performed by the Canadian rock band Barenaked Ladies. This band is globally recognized for their 1998 record “Stunt,” which went quadruple platinum and featured the hit singles “It’s All Been Done” and “One Week.” If you want to engage a Generation X individual in quick recitation, just start the lyrics “It’s been…” and watch as they complete the rest of the song.
The performance of the “The Big Bang Theory” theme song by Barenaked Ladies is exhilaratingly fast-paced, as it narrates the origin of the universe. The song is fittingly geeky, just like the sitcom itself, with quick-fire yet mostly comprehensible scientific and historical references. However, it seems the song isn’t geeky enough, as it contains a notable scientific error.
A particular line goes, “Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,” and then, “nearly 14 billion years ago, expansion started (wait!).” Following this, a couple of inaccuracies arise when they sing “The Earth began to cool, the autotrophs began to drool. Neanderthals developed tools.”
In high school biology, we learn that autotrophs are organisms capable of converting non-living substances such as carbon or sunlight into nutrients. This classification includes plants, algae, and bacteria. So, needless to say, autotrophs can’t drool.
Autotrophs do not drool and neanderthals did not develop tools
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Still, we could cut Barenaked Ladies some slack. The term “drool” might have been used metaphorically to express a hunger or craving, not necessarily the literal salivation. When the “autotrophs began to drool,” it could imply a yearning for sunlight, a resource crucial for their survival. It’s a charming metaphor for algae.
However, another error presents itself when the song mentions the Neanderthals’ development of tools. Neanderthals, a species of Homo sapiens that inhabited Asia around 400,000 years ago, did not develop tools. In fact, the earliest known tools, discovered by anthropologists, are believed to have been created by paranthropus about 3.2 to 3.5 million years ago, long before the Neanderthals’ time. The correct assertion would be that Australopithecus afarensis or Australopithecus africanus, the early humans of the Stone Age, were the creators of tools. Neanderthals were simply inheritors of these tools.
The song further claims, “We built a wall! We built the pyramids!” This could be misleading, as it implies that these events happened in this sequence, which isn’t historically accurate. The Great Wall of China’s construction began around the 7th century BCE and was gradually pieced together by Emperor Qin Shi Huang around 200 BCE. The most famous sections were not built until the Ming Dynasty, over 1500 years later. Meanwhile, the construction of the Great Pyramids of Giza started around 2600 BCE, well before the construction of the Great Wall’s oldest sections.
It seems the Barenaked Ladies could have done with a little more research before they dived into songwriting so casually.
Credit: www.slashfilm.com
