Humans love shiny things.
No, seriously, look around you next time you’re in a building and count the number of things that are shiny even thiugh they do not need to be shiny.
Humans are naturally attracted to any thing that shines, shimmers or glitters— I mean for fucks sake, we invented glitter. There are people right now who work in glitter factories and so whose sole job is to make shiny things for people to put nonshiny things so as to make them shiny.
We paint our nails and faces with glittery varnishes and shimmery powders. We use gloss on our lips to make them shinier. We shine our shoes to make ourselves look smart. We have been known to start fucking wars over who owns the bits of land with the shiny rocks in. Genocides have been commited and kingdoms toppled because one group had a lot of shiny metals and the other group wanted those shiny metals.
Why, then, do we all like shiny things so much?
Well, scientists now think that it’s probably because we evolved in a desert. If you’re living in a desert, then you’re going to need to be constantly be on the lookout for water, and water shines in the sun. So the best way to survive in a desert environment is to just chase after everything that shines because it might be water.
So now imagine how weird this would all be to a species who didn’t evolve in a desert.
Imagine aliens just being baffled by the human habit of wearing certain rocks— or even just pieces of glass or plastic cut to look like those rocks— just because we like the way they catch the light. Imagine aliens who come from worlds where there are a lot of shiny rocks bringing them back for their human friends to see and watching, puzzled, as said human friends start wearing the rocks around their necks, wrists, fingers or even (weirdly) stuck through special holes they make in their ears.
“Thank you so much! These are beautiful!”
“I literally just scooped up some of the gravel from the spaceport— how are you so amazed?”
Imagine caves on alien planets full of crystals and gems becoming huge tourist attractions for humans, and the aliens not understanding why because, on their planet, pretty much the only people who go to the caves are school groups and geologists. The caves are boring— why do the humans keep taking photos of a load of old rocks?
We complain that Magpies are obsessed with shiny things and keep stealing our shiny things but that just shows how crazy we are about protecting our shiny things
Also imagine that some alien species that really likes, I dunno, textures or really subtle striations or something, going apeshit over our gravel and shit