A new finding in Zambia reveals the oldest known wooden construction shaped by the hands of a human ancestor and demonstrates the ingenuity and technical prowess of our ancient relatives.
Archaeologists have discovered the oldest evidence yet of a wooden structure crafted by the hands of a human ancestor. Two tree trunks, notched like Lincoln Logs, were preserved at the bottom of the Kalambo River in Zambia. If the logs' estimated 476,000-year-old age is correct, it means that woodworking might predate the emergence of our own species, Homo sapiens, and highlights the intelligence of our hominin ancestors.
In a new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers led by Larry Barham, a professor in the Department of archaeology, classics, and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool in the U.K, detail the wooden objects they unearthed. These include two that were found with stone tools below the river and three that were covered in clay deposits above the river level. These wooden artifacts survived over hundreds of thousands of years due to the permanently elevated water table.
While the small, modified hunks of wood from Kalambo are pretty similar to 400,000-year-old foraging and hunting tools found in Europe and China, the interlocking logs have"no known parallels in the African or Eurasian Palaeolithic," the researchers wrote in the study. "Wood from tree trunks enabled humans to construct large objects," Barham and colleagues wrote in their study, suggesting that their"life in a periodically wet floodplain would be enhanced by constructing a raised platform, walkway or foundation for dwellings."
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