15,000-year-old ruins found under the CFA parking lot raise questions

by Zachary Gelman “Certified Gold Digger”

PITTSBURGH – It was 4 a.m. on Feb. 29, and two insomniac freshmen were digging a hole in the Fine Arts parking lot, allegedly preparing the foundations for upstart organization CMU Gestapo’s carnival booth. You see, Gestapo is a serious organization. These unnamed miners had been chipping away at the asphalt for five hours a night since Thanksgiving break, covering their progress with a vampire cape stolen from a School of Drama sex party. Both undecided in Dietrich, their grades haven’t suffered. For these two men, it would have been a night just like any other, had a student not been returning to Scobell from a self-imposed 112 study-exile in Hunt Library. (Due to the library’s outrageously early closing times, students have been forced to intentionally “Night at the Museum” themselves, apparently by hiding in the bathrooms when the librarians close for the night). The Scobelle noticed the illicit tunneling, and promptly called CMUPD. It wasn’t an amnesty call, so they arrived at 6:15 a.m., the tunnellers long gone. The studier was booked for trespassing (check this week’s Crime and Incident report for more information), and the PD set up a sting operation, waiting for the night when the diggers would surely strike again.

The booth bulldozers returned to the scene at 1 a.m. on Feb. 30 and were quickly apprehended. Officer Nichols, who oversaw the operation, described it as a “classic three-man tiger trap, although they were only two men, by which I mean two ‘humen.’ Really one was a man, and the other a woman. Anyways, Sergeant Cartier and I jumped from behind there [Nichols points at a nearby car] and Sergeant Dime and Master-of-Ceremonies Penix brought up the rear [Nichols now points at a papier-mâché palm tree with real coconuts on it].” But what seemed on the surface to be a classic Carnegie Mellon crime like the tens before it quickly became quite more complicated.

When the CivE majors came to fill in the hole, they noticed signs of previous development, and relinquished control to the archeology majors, who commenced a dig of their own. Their survey found an entire 15,000-year-old university, lost to the muds of time until now. Not only does this overturn centuries of established thought on human development, it’s also just kinda weird, right? Out of everything they found, YOU may find these FIVE things the most SHOCKING:

Similar Burger Joint: It seems like they may have had their own Stack’d Underground equivalent, though they hadn’t invented burgers yet, and for them underground was just ground. Linguists can only hope to figure out what this ancient dining location may have therefore been called. Comparisons between current fecal matter and fossilized fecal remains imply that the ancient burger-flipper equivalent put less food poisoning in their meat.
Beautiful 15-Million-Petal Lotus Stream: This beautiful lotus stream may have served as a moat protecting the students from invading hordes, much akin to the original purpose of our beloved (Guiness World Record-holding) Fence.
Duplicate El Gallo: Yeah, apparently there’s an El Gallo (birth name El Gallo De Oro) down there that looks exactly the same. The only difference appears to be a lack of Pepsi, possibly due to PepsiCo being founded in 1965 and not 13,458 BC.
Caveman Classrooms: Making us so sure of the ancient ruins’ status as a university are these caveman classrooms. They’ve got caveman blackboards, on which are caveman equations that appear to be multiplying rocks or some other caveman thing. Maybe caveman philosophy with John Rocke and Grug Hegel, I’m just spitballing here.
A Working Gymnasium: A sports center complete with crude, square-shaped hoops and square-shaped rock balls was found. Interestingly enough, carbon dating shows that this gym took only one year to build, despite the denizens of this land not having wrecking balls or cranes or unions.

Hanger-on Case Western Reserve University has coincidentally also decided to start digging, but they’ve only found racially ambiguous burial grounds.