[HN Gopher] Archaeologists discover oldest wooden structure
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Archaeologists discover oldest wooden structure
Author : gnufx
Score : 84 points
Date : 2023-09-20 18:18 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.liverpool.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.liverpool.ac.uk)
| sudofail wrote:
| Considering beavers make wooden structures for their own benefit
| and survival, it's not really surprising that ancestors of Homo
| Sapiens did as well.
| verisimi wrote:
| Maybe this one of many half a million year old wooden beaver
| structures, given that they build in water.
| diogenes4 wrote:
| > Considering beavers make wooden structures for their own
| benefit and survival
|
| It's more like they have a compulsion to stack wood where they
| hear running water. The implication here is intention and a
| cognizance of purpose, which is not unheard of in the animal
| kingdom but is fairly rare.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| We don't know that it's purely compulsion, do we? Perhaps
| they know that still pools of water are best for survival so
| they're motivated to prevent water from running away. The
| level of compulsion could be more sophisticated than we
| imagine. This seems to be true with many mammals. Not long
| ago in North America, it wasn't uncommon to think of dogs as
| meat-headed automatons. Today it's common to recognize that
| they have emotions and personalities much like we do, and
| there's little evidence to suggest otherwise. I'm not
| convinced beavers are like giant fruit flies trying to plug
| holes.
| jl6 wrote:
| 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:
|
| > They used new luminescence dating techniques, which reveal the
| last time minerals in the sand surrounding the finds were exposed
| to sunlight, to determine their age.
|
| ... but it seems like there might be other explanations for that
| sand being there?
| diogenes4 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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?
| sam_goody wrote:
| They do not have extraordinary evidence, but they believe that
| the claim is not extra-ordinary.
| varjag wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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_ wrote:
| 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-...
|
| (And the wood found here was worked, not just a handy
| pokey-stick)
| bluehorizon2 wrote:
| 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.
| labrador wrote:
| Where do you find 470,000 year old wood that isn't petrified?
| anotheraccount9 wrote:
| I would really like to know the answer, if anyone wants to
| share.
| rhelz wrote:
| What struck me is that the two pieces of wood were found notched
| together at a 90-degree angle. This has got to be the first-known
| 90-degree angle in history.
|
| Virtually nothing in nature has a 90-degree angle. This is an
| invention of the highest order.
| pleb_nz wrote:
| Awesome find and I am not surprised at all by the age. I wonder
| which species it was?
| orbital-decay wrote:
| The article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06557-9
| foota wrote:
| How amazing would it be to discover that an ancient civilization
| existed with a technology level on par with the iron age or so? I
| guess if we were finding dinosaurs though the odds we wouldn't
| have found anything from that time are maybe slim.
| tshaddox wrote:
| It could have been a long time before dinosaurs, and/or limited
| geographically in areas where the geological activity over tens
| of millions of years would make finding traces of them even
| more rare than average.
| alehlopeh wrote:
| We have found many ancient civilizations with a technology on
| par with the Iron Age. They're called Iron Age civilizations.
| foota wrote:
| Sorry, I mean, long before the iron age.
| artursapek wrote:
| No need to apologize, HN people get off on being snarky
| counterintuitiv wrote:
| [flagged]
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Iron artefacts are likely to last much better than wood ones,
| so if that was so we'd likely have much evidence collected.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| That river has been running there for 0.5 million years? That's
| incredibly stable!
| pvaldes wrote:
| Don't understand why they had seen a refuge there. Looks much
| more like a bonfire to me.
|
| This wood looks cut in a tip and partially burnt in the other,
| and the fire makes this notches easily when two logs overlap.
| Also explains the preservation of the wood, as it was sterilized
| by fire (maybe minutes before a rain fell or a flood hit). Also
| the size of the logs (1,5m is too short for a home, but perfect
| to be carried and stored. Plus the near presence of the classical
| fire hardened sticks. Is pretty obvious.
|
| So first evidence of "structural use" of wood is a too premature
| claim. nope. I don't think so.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| There are chopping marks and striations that show the notches
| were worked with tools. It's only two logs so I can't jump to
| structure but it's wood that was worked to lock together for
| some purpose. Maybe structure is meant in the more general
| sense?
| greatpostman wrote:
| Timelines of all human achievements keep getting pushed back.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
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