With the holidays a couple of weeks behind us, now's the time that people start to realize that some of the presents they got a

a a a chip in it. Maybe the new iPad won't turn on.

So return packages go out and nasty reviews go in. This product is garbage, one star. This may seem like a modern reaction, but humans honestly have remained remarkably similar throughout history.

Ancient people were not that different. They hated getting scammed and the one-star review

goes back thousands of years.

So on day 17 of our Atlas Obscura Advent calendar

and day two of Human Experiment Week,

I go back in time with producer Amanda McGowan

to ancient Babylonia, and we are going to see just

how similar our ancient ancestors really were to us.

The review of humanity is in.

One star. Hello, Hi Amanda.

Nice to see you.

Nice to see you too.

I would like to start our conversation today by asking you a question,

which is, have you ever left a Yelp review on anything?

I've left like three Yelp reviews in my life,

and I think they were mostly positive.

I'd have to go actually look and be like, what did I say?

I think I was like, like oh this was good.

Do you leave reviews on things are you like a reviewer?

No I similarly I leave good reviews of things that I like but I have like a backlog file cabinet in my mind of bad reviews that I wish I would leave, but I know that I won't.

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