4 ms·

How do they know the wood was used 476,000 years ago, as opposed to a human 6000 years ago finding and using some 470,000 year old wood? This gives a hint: > T

• sam_goody 3y ago
  They do not have extraordinary evidence, but they believe that the claim is not extra-ordinary.
  • varjag 3y ago
    It's strange, for a jump from historical to an evolutionary timescale. I find this really hard to believe though naturally archeologists must be knowing what they're doing.
    • huthuthike 3y ago
      Well we know that homo species have been using stone for millions of years because stone doesn't degrade easily. It's not that wild of a jump in logic to think they've been using wood for just as long.
      • _a_a_a_ 3y ago
        Recently it was found monkeys/apes producing chippings that looked very much like what we thought hominids were producing, so that caused some upset. Edit: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/stone-flakes-made-by-monkeys-raise-questions-about-early-human-tools-180981785/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/stone-flakes-made-... (And the wood found here was worked, not just a handy pokey-stick)
• labrador 3y ago
  Where do you find 470,000 year old wood that isn't petrified?
  • anotheraccount9 3y ago
    I would really like to know the answer, if anyone wants to share.
    • danparsonson 3y ago
      It's a rhetorical question - you don't usually find wood that old except in very specific situations like this where conditions happen to have been right for preservation.
• diogenes4 3y ago
  > How do they know the wood was used 476,000 years ago, as opposed to a human 6000 years ago finding and using some 470,000 year old wood? Seems absurdly unlikely—is there a reason to suspect this is the case? Even if you were to find half-a-million-year-old wood why would you use it to build a structure?
  • satvikpendem 3y ago
    I mean, we use rocks that are millions of years old in our own structures, why wouldn't it be likely that an early human saw some wood and thought that it'd be a strong building material without knowing or considering the age of that wood, or something to that effect?
    • pixelfarmer 3y ago
      Just that wood is organic material and suffers faster degradation vs. rocks when exposed to weather, which is implied in "if you can just find it". Mind you, they were digging up material in the old times already to find the best stuff for making their tools, but they were for sure not looking for old wood in that manner. Plus, well preserved old wood is much harder than its fresh counterparts (better tooling / more time for processing required) and a rare find on top of that, so unlikely to be used for standard utility structures.
• bluehorizon2 3y ago
  I had the same question but the article said that the wood would have rotted by then. Makes sense since even lumber will dry rot in years if not taken care of. So I can buy the idea that it’s very old because it was preserved in an accidentally special way. I’m just wondering if it being submerged in water would have affected any readings or measurements they made since who knows what hundreds of thousands of years or even thousands of years might do to the things they are measuring.
• danparsonson 3y ago
  This is the usual way of dating buried archaeological finds - you work out when the thing was buried by studying the surrounding material. In this case the specific dating technique is new, but the principle is well established. If you find something buried in material that was laid down 470,000 years ago, then the thing was buried at that time. Assuming teleportation doesn't exist, how else could the artefacts get there? The only other option I can think of is deliberate burial and I imagine archaeologists would already have considered that idea. As to finding and using extremely old wood - wood does not survive that long except in cases of very specific environmental conditions like this one; surely another reason to expect that the wood has lain undisturbed for its entire history, rather than having been dug up and turned into some structure a few thousand years ago (then buried again).
  • 1letterunixname 3y ago
    TL;DR: superposition.
    • danparsonson 3y ago
      Too Short; Didn't Understand - the link from your other comment is useful: https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/dating https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/dating
• pixelfarmer 3y ago
  Depending on the soil (they seem to have rather colorful soil there), you will see disturbances of any kind because refilling a hole will show different colors. The newer the dig is, the clearer the line between undisturbed and disturbed parts, i.e. it "washes out" over time. That is how for example you can figure out locations of house posts despite the wood not being there at all, or finding out that an old grave has been partially robbed in olden times. Which also means it was not really about making sure you have old wood in old soil, but to determine the age of the wood itself by dating how long ago the sand surrounding it was exposed to sunlight (as they had to make a dig or disturb the soil at that point of time).
• SomewhatLikely 3y ago
  I was wondering instead what their dating method would do with old sand that had been dug up and quickly buried during the construction. Does a very short exposure to sun reset the mineral signature they are looking at? If not, then the structure could be much newer then the last time the sand spent an extended time in the sun. In fact, if the sand digging and moving happened in the evening to avoid the heat of the sun then the sand may have been dug up and used while never being exposed to the sun.
• Maxion 3y ago
  > How do they know the wood was used 476,000 years ago, as opposed to a human 6000 years ago finding and using some 470,000 year old wood? Surely we have not fallen this far away from nature as a species? Wood rots. IMO you're just being facetious about the find.