9 ms·
Earliest Carpenters: 476k-year-old log structure discovered in Zambia
- pvaldes 3y agoI still think the same: This is, most probably, just a bonfire. I will shamelessly self-quote: "wood looks cut in a tip and partially burnt in the other. Fire makes this notches easily when two logs overlap. Also explains the preservation of the wood, sterilized by fire (maybe minutes before a rain fell or a flood hit). Previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37587791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37587791
- JeffSnazz 3y ago[dead]
- misja111 3y agoYeah I agree that the article's explanation seems unlikely. A jump from 11K to 476K years ago just seems too big, one would expect that we would have found plenty of other wooden structures in the period in between if people had been manufacturing them all the time.
- gcanyon 3y agoTechnology gets lost all the time. The people who migrated to Australia apparently lost several key technologies over the years because the population was too sparse to guarantee the maintenance of knowledge.
- defrost 3y agoDo you have any examples of these lost technologies and references to the papers that discuss this? Or is this some Quadrant sourced opinioning?
- ceejayoz 3y agoGreek fire and Damascus steel are fairly good examples. Maybe chuck in the Antikythera device.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- TedDoesntTalk 3y agoRoman concrete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete
- tzs 3y agoI don't think I'd count the Antikythera device. My understanding is that the mystery with it is how it was made. The astronomical and mathematical knowledge to design it was well known among the Greeks. If Antikythera devices were common, with say every ship having one, every town and village temple having one, every school having one, and so on we'd have a big mystery because we don't think the Greeks had the technology for mass production of mechanisms with the necessary accuracy and precision. But we've only found one, and we don't know how long it took to build. The Antikythera device could be the work of one builder and his assistants over a lifetime, financed by someone very wealthy and able to supply as many slaves as the builder wanted. It could even have been built over more than one lifetime, if the sponsor was a government. When you are not in a hurry and you have a lot of laborers you can make very precise mechanisms with little more technology than blocks of metal and hand files. As Teller of Penn & Teller once observed, "Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect". Penn has said "The only secret of magic is that I’m willing to work harder on it than you think it’s worth".
- nialo 3y agoIn case anyone here hasn't seen it, I want to share this very cool youtube series of an Australian clock maker creating a replica of the Antikythera device using only tools believed to be available to the ancient Greeks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE&list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0to4RXv4_jDU2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE&list=PLZioPDnFPN...
- ReleaseCandidat 3y ago> we would have found plenty of other wooden structures in the period Well, wood is not exactly known to survive for hundreds, much less thousands or hundreds of thousand of years.
- misja111 3y agoSure, but apparently the chance that it survives 476K year is > 0. That would imply that the chance of finding preserved wood anywhere in [11K .. 476K] is > 0 as well. Given such a large period with nothing found in it, and given that in this period wood needed to survive considerable less long than 476K, makes me want to look for other explanations.
- mysterydip 3y agoIf it was a burned structure, maybe the burning affected the measurement of the dating.
- Kye 3y agoI like to think the people who date these things can tell the difference between the carbon from burning and carbon-14. I'm not sure it's even used for something this old since AFAIK it only works so far back.
- Bouncingsoul1 3y agothey got 'infinite' for all carbon dating. They derived the age from the sand layer the wood was found. I got this from reading the paper.
- pulse7 3y agoEarth's crust is moving. Maybe the sand layers moved after the wood was placed there... and maybe the derived age is all wrong...
- 3y ago
- stubish 3y agoI dunno. What seems unlikely to me is that hominids and their predecessors had stone tools for >3 million years before they realized they could use them to build a bridge or tent. I would expect simple carpentry to be occurring much, much earlier, and the evidence lost to time.
- atwrk 3y agoIt usually is prudent to assume that professionals in foreign fields aren't idiots; that includes archeology and their knowledge of the existance of bonfires. Just skimming the paper for a few seconds makes the reasoning of the researchers pretty clear.
- caleb-allen 3y agoYes, but I'm a programmer.
- EliRivers 3y agoIndeed; the simple thinking you apply to sort some numbers, or to understand a brutally simple logic such as a programming language spec, gives you incredible insight into all fields of human endeavour, past and present.
- Kye 3y agoMaking a linked list is a lot like processing a lidar scan of a jungle canopy for signs of ruins, if you think about it. Am I being serious? I have no idea.
- datameta 3y agoOn a somewhat related note - I highly recommend visiting the Mayan ruins at the Coba archaelogical site. It has the tallest Mayan pyramid on the Yucatan peninsula, with half of it (the inaccessible rear) still inundated by dense jungle. A few tips: if you don't want to opt for a guided tour, prepare to turn down several pointed offers at the entrance. Also, there are small rickshaws for transportation - they will inflate the distances involved to get you to hire one - if you can take a few hours total of walking including breaks you don't need their services. Quite a place! Less squeaky clean than Chichen Itza.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 3y ago
- jasonwatkinspdx 3y agoBonfires don't flatten a log leaving tool marks. They do leave burn marks. I agree with the other comment that it's rather absurd to rebuff a reviewed paper with such an armchair view.
- TSiege 3y agoThe evidence seems quite good that this was intentional. The paper found evidence of both using stone tools and fire to shape the notches. Using fire as an aide to woodworking is well known and still exists today in some traditional forms of woodworking. I don't see anywhere in the paper saying the entire structure was burned, just the faces of the notches. They were able to reproduce the chop marks they found with recreated stone tools of the time. Given we know stone tools were used for more than 2.5 million years by the genus homo, I don't see why it's a stretch to say they were using stone tools on wood 2 million years into having stone tools. Lack of evidence does not mean lack of occurrence. It is very difficult to find organic matter from so long ago given that it normally decays. Furthermore, this is not a radically complex structure either. Something a child could make. > We interpret the notch as intentional, made by scraping and adzing1 to create a join between the log and trunk, forming a construction of two connected parts. Infrared spectroscopy (Supplementary Information Section 5) provides indeterminate evidence for use of fire in shaping the notch. Clark17 described a similar find, from the Acheulean in Site B, of comparable length (165 cm long) with a “wide and deepish groove” transverse to the long axis, with tapered ends. He interpreted the groove as anthropogenic and suggested it was part of a structure. The excavation of two interlocking logs in BLB5, with shaped ends on both objects supports this interpretation. We know of no comparable construction in the early archaeological record. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06557-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06557-9
- VoodooJuJu 3y agoThis really shouldn't be downvoted. This isn't reddit where we lap up everything an authority or so-called expert serves in front of us, especially when those experts are slaves who need to sensationalize things to make their careers more relevant, "I discovered the oldest structure". True intellectuals are skeptic. Try being a little skeptical, like the parent comment above. I'd sooner trust a freeman like the parent commenter than a chained academic and their redditor fanbase.
- Clubber 3y agoYou burn wood slightly to make it stronger. This was also common when making wooden spear tips. https://www.customshingles.com/blog/wood-burning-for-wood-roofs-shou-sugi-ban#:~:text=Yes%2C%20charring%20wood%20makes%20the,results%20will%20be%20less%20impressive https://www.customshingles.com/blog/wood-burning-for-wood-ro....
- ReleaseCandidat 3y agoThe actual paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374057808_Evidence_for_the_earliest_structural_use_of_wood_at_least_476000_years_ago https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374057808_Evidence_...
- SiempreViernes 3y agoMore free version: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06557-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06557-9 (yes really!)
- Aardwolf 3y agoSo humanoids were already building things half a million years ago. Can you imagine what they'll be building in half a million years in the future? (if we're still around)
- Isamu 3y agoSome will say: it’ll be log structures again
- myth_drannon 3y ago"I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." - Albert Einstein.
- stareatgoats 3y agoI totally agree with the sentiment, but the citation marks might not be wholly appropriate. This is what Snopes said when they dug into it: > "We found several other instances of people making similar statements at around the same time, indicating that this was a popular opinion at that time that was evidently shared by Albert Einstein. However, we have been unable to find a direct quote from the physicist that matches this particular meme." https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/einstein-world-war-iv-sticks-stones/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/einstein-world-war-iv-stic...
- saalweachter 3y agoIf I were famous enough for people to attribute quotes to me while I was still alive, I would totally take the good, pithy ones and go, "I've said it before and I'll say it again..." at my next interview.
- gumby 3y agoI know Mike Godwin and can tell you he at least doesn’t have to.
- visarga 3y ago<offtopic>Just shows the raw capabilities of the human brain without the support of advanced ideas discovered by previous generations. In other words if we forgot the knowledge and skills that GPT's have mastered, we'd be right back there. It took half a million years to get from there to here, and a single human brain can't do it during a lifespan. Our intelligence is amplified by 500K years of experience collected and transmitted through language. On the other hand AlphaZero played millions of self play games under an evolutionary tournament style, imitating human cultural evolution, and reaching superhuman level. AI can do it too, if given the exploratory budget.</>
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- stainablesteel 3y ago[flagged]
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Balgair 3y agoVery short article, well worth the time. To note, the supposed builders of the structure also left behind other tools that the researchers identify, not just the two logs. All that evidence after nearly half a million years is a miracle of a find. Also, Homo heidelbergensis was the supposed builder. The wiki page has a lot of good info on these folks. One interesting point is that Homo heidelbergensis was more closely related to neanderthals than to us. We know tool use occurs in a lot of apes, so finding such evidence isn't to be all that unexpected. Still, amazing stuff and amazing work by the research team. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_heidelbergensis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_heidelbergensis
- passwordoops 3y agoVery exciting! I love that the time line for humanity keeps getting pushed back. HOWEVER, >All that evidence after nearly half a million years is a miracle of a find. I really hope this doesn't turn out to be one of those too good to be true finds. I hate that the nature of academic research is making me so cynical
- dylan604 3y agoThe cynical skepticism isn't a bad thing, especially as you've pointed out, so much stuff has been published that would make it necessary. Wholehearted acceptance, blindly, on anything new is just not a sound practice. Even if reviewing and confirming the material only takes minutes, it was at least reviewed and confirmed.
- JohnFen 3y agoA good scientist is a skeptical/cynical scientist. And never forget the two main rules of understanding scientific findings: 1) pay no attention to what media reports say about a scientific finding. Read the paper instead. The media almost never gets things right and very often completely misrepresents them. 2) One paper is the same as no paper. Don't even think about entertaining the notion that what a single paper says is actually true. Wait until there are other papers from researchers trying to reproduce results.
- 3y ago
- dr_kretyn 3y agoIt's surprising that the quick conclusion is "proto-humans". Couldn't any other animal do this? Half a million years is a lot of time. Couldn't proto-elephants be a bit more resourceful back then?
- gehwartzen 3y agoThis was my initial thinking as well. Ive seen plenty of notched logs created by modern beavers when they give up on a project. Perhaps not even an animal. I could imagine several scenarios where a perpendicular placed log could rub back and forth across another log creating a notch over time. I guess it comes down to tool marks on the logs notched area but the whole thing is so weathered I can't imagine that evidence is crystal clear either. Its worth noting that the other tools, which the article mentions were found at the same site, are ~100k years younger.
- wolverine876 3y agoWe can speculate on any possibility. The basis of science, and the reason for its outstanding success, is the requirement for evidence. Do we have any evidence of any other organisms ever doing anything of the sort? The answer is no. Almost all known non-human tool use is for obtaining food, afaik. Other primates use tools, but it's on the level of a stick stripped of leaves to poke into a termite nest (termites crawl on stick, remove stick, eat). Avians are the other main category; some only have been observed using tools in captivty. Corvids (crows, ravens, rooks) are particularly interesting. New Caledonian Crows will actually bend the end of a tool to make a hook, good for prying out grubs from under bark. Rooks have handled some particularly complex problems in captivity. There is no evidence of any non-human doing anything like making axes, chopping wood, and constructing something. If I understand the paper correctly, the 'axes' were 'handaxes' - archaeologist-speak for an unhafted axes, i.e., axes sans handles, i.e., effectively just the axe head which you hold in the palm of your hand. Our ancestors took > 2 million years to figure out how to attach tools to hafts, succeeding by ~200,000 years ago (but only in one place - 'the future is here, it's just not widely distributed yet'.)
- sunday_serif 3y agoHappened at around unix time -15 trillion
- pphysch 3y agoEngineering was >15 trillion seconds old when engineers decided a 32-bit timestamp ought to be enough for anyone
- contingencies 3y agoNews at 82800
- tick_tock_tick 3y agoThe simulation only started at unix 0 so really it "happened" a 0 but was coded to appear in the past to help seed the universe and reduce agent confusion, a classic issue in the previous versions.
- kartman 3y ago[dead]
- xvector 3y agoThe log structure is 476k years old and the tools are 390k-326k years old. Does this mean that people might have been living at this site for up to 86k-150k years? That is mind-boggling.
- fooker 3y agoThat's not too surprising. Mesopotamia has been continuously inhabited for about that long. Humans tend to stick to good places until climate change forces their hand! Not even war is enough to make us migrate.
- seniortaco 3y agoIt is honestly shocking that there were some form of human building houses with stone axes half a million years ago. It's difficult to reason about what kind of humans they were.. but it sounds quite a bit like modern humans. How old are we exactly? And when I say "we" I don't mean Homo Sapien as we would likely identify in a sort of "uncanny valley" way with other species of human.
- Tor3 3y agoIt wasn't about building houses or anything like that. From the article: "[..] the logs may have formed part of a walkway or the foundation of a platform built over wetlands."
- bomewish 3y agoHaven’t there been a tonne of these things that supposedly push back the clock of human history? Why is this one in particular getting a lot of attention??
- Muehe 3y agoI'd assume it's due to the discovery not being some human remains but rather processed wood, making it the oldest evidence for wood working we have by a massive margin. Quote from the article: > Prior to this discovery, the oldest known surviving wooden structures were built by people living in northern England around 11,000 years ago.
- bomewish 3y agoI get that. I just thought there were a tonne of even more exotic finds of more advanced technology than woodworking — but it’s not always clear which are ‘fringe’ and which have been invested with the epistemic authority of institutional science. That is the confusing thing.