[HN Gopher] 430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the ol...
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430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found
https://archive.ph/mHlUT https://apnews.com/article/oldest-wooden-
tools-marathousa-1-...
https://archaeologymag.com/2026/01/430000-year-old-wooden-to...
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 305 points
Date : 2026-01-27 15:46 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| drakythe wrote:
| 430,000 years? Am I reading this headline correctly? (since the
| site seems to have fallen victim to the HN-hug-of-death). That
| seems wildly further back than I understood humans to have tools,
| or even homo sapiens to have existed.
|
| ETA: Today I learned I had a much much larger gap in knowledge
| than I thought I did. Thanks to everyone for the information and
| links!
| dyauspitr wrote:
| It wasn't Homo sapiens most likely. We have found stone tools
| made by Erectus.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| Yes it's definitely further back than homo sapiens have existed
| (200k - 300k years), but our ancestor species were known to
| have used tools and control fire. I believe we have evidence of
| tool use going back 1 million years. So this article is
| referencing the oldest known _wooden_ tools, which are
| obviously much less likely to be preserved across the ages.
| throwup238 wrote:
| We have evidence of control over fire (but not fire starting)
| at about 1 million years. Stone tools go even further back,
| at least 2 million years.
| drakythe wrote:
| Wait hang on, would they "control" file by finding natural
| sources (volcano, lightning strike wildfire, etc.) and then
| make use of that source for controlled sources of
| light/heat/etc? I guess I've always thought of "control" of
| fire including the intentional starting thereof.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| > Wait hang on, would they "control" file by finding
| natural sources (volcano, lightning strike wildfire,
| etc.) and then make use of that source for controlled
| sources of light/heat/etc?
|
| Pretty much. Being able to transfer/build a fire is a lot
| easier than starting one. Fire starting requires
| bow/flint&steel and a lot of patience. Control basically
| means using simple torches to transfer fire from one
| place to another (where the initial source is either
| lightning/wildfire or embers of a previous fire).
| walkerbrown wrote:
| Some very recently published research (Dec 2025) claims
| evidence of fire starting among homo neanderthalensis.
| This would push back fire starting know-how (not only
| control) from 50k to 400k years ago. Cool stuff!
|
| [1] https://www.nhm.ac.uk/press-office/press-
| releases/groundbrea...
| sophacles wrote:
| There's pretty strong evidence that the use of fire to
| cook food is what enabled modern humans, with their short
| (and relatively fragile) digestive systems and giant
| energy hungry brains to evolve. Cooking food makes more
| calories bio-available in food and also reduced the
| amount of energy the body needs to expend on that food to
| harvest calories... so there's more energy available for
| thinking (etc).
| dbcurtis wrote:
| When is the first evidence for cooking?
| throwup238 wrote:
| That's a complicated question. The Wonderwerk Cave in
| South Africa where we found the first evidence of
| controlled fire also contained burned plant remains and
| bones, which could be interpreted as evidence of cooking.
| There were also burned fish remains found at the Gesher
| Benot Ya'aqov site in Israel, dated to about 780 kYA,
| which could also be interpreted as evidence of cooking.
|
| By far the strongest evidence is the Qesem Cave in
| Israel, which had a central hearth and so many burned
| animal remains that it couldn't have been accidental.
| Unfortunately the dating on that is controversial and the
| error bar is huge at 300 +- 100 kYA (200,000-400,000
| years ago).
| dbcurtis wrote:
| Thanks! That is much farther back than I thought, even
| 200 kYA.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| And cooking kills like 99+% of pathogens, which freed us
| from much of the parasite/disease stress other animals
| must live with.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| I had thought (perhaps wrongly) that our brains got a
| massive "boost" in capacity when our ancestors moved to
| coastal areas and the diet was dominated by (Omega 3
| heavy) shellfish and crustaceans.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9505798/
| riffraff wrote:
| ah, there's a very good movie about this exact topic (not
| scientifically accurate, one presumes, but still very
| good)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_for_Fire_(film)
| doxeddaily wrote:
| Not to mention the Iron Maiden song!
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF7cWpBTZ6s
| sethammons wrote:
| Firehawks spread fire to scare out game; that count?
|
| https://wildlife.org/australian-firehawks-use-fire-to-
| catch-...
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| We have 3.3 million year old stone tools
| https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14464. They're very
| simple (even more so than the Oldowan stone tools
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan) and basically just
| look like rocks, but there is clear evidence of intentional
| shaping by hominins (somewhere in the fuzzy late
| Australopthis/early homo transition).
| drakythe wrote:
| Thanks for these sources. Archeology definitely is a big
| known unknown for me, so even getting started reading basic
| info about this is rough. I appreciate the links and terms.
| sophacles wrote:
| This youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/stefanmilo
| has a lot of good stuff. I don't know enough to know
| where he's right or wrong, but provides entry points for
| to looking more into it.
|
| I have gone down a couple rabbit holes based on his
| videos and while it seems like he's occasionally gotten
| some facts wrong or misunderstood an argument, I'm pretty
| confident he's doing a decent job accurately representing
| the archaeology.
| drakythe wrote:
| Awesome. I've watched plenty of Miniminuteman (Milo
| Rossi) videos, but his tend to be more pop-sci/debunking
| outrageous claims and less foundationally educational.
| I'll check this channel out too.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Tools predate homo sapiens (which emerged about 300 kYA) by
| millions of years. The first stone industry - Oldowan - is at
| least two million years old and might be as old as three
| million. They predate what we call "archaic humans" by a long
| time.
|
| Even this evidence of woodworking is largely unremarkable.
| We've got phytolith [1] and microwear [2] studies showing
| unambiguous evidence of woodworking going back at least 1.5
| million years. Wood tools just don't survive very long, so this
| find is most notable for its preservation.
|
| [1]
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
|
| [2]
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
| drakythe wrote:
| Well, today I learned something! Thanks for the information,
| I guess I know which rabbit hole I'm going down today.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Just edited to add two paper citations for the phytoliths
| and microwear studies. Have fun! It's a deep rabbit hole
| largely ignored by popsci publications so there's lots to
| explore.
| drakythe wrote:
| Thanks! I'll add them to my reading list for today. Its
| going to be interesting, I can already tell.
| niwtsol wrote:
| As you seem knowledgeable of this topic and it is super
| interesting, any books you would recommend that gives a
| good broad overview of all of this?
| throwup238 wrote:
| I don't read popsci but if you're interested in a
| rigorous treatment I'd recommend _The Human Career_ by
| Klein which has the broad overview and _The Human Past_
| edited by Scarre which is more of a textbook.
|
| I mostly just read the papers as they are published but
| I've heard good things about those two books (they're on
| my reading list but I haven't read enough to form an
| opinion)
| wil421 wrote:
| To put it into perspective, we did not invent fire.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Well, nobody did, because fire was likely used for tens
| or hundreds of thousands of years before anyone figured
| out how to _make_ fire on demand.
| taejavu wrote:
| Which is what the comment you're replying to means by
| "invent".
| dredmorbius wrote:
| _Use_ of fire considerably pre-dates _H. sapiens_ , with
| anthropological evidence dating to 1.7 -- 2 million years
| ago. _Sapiens_ diverged from common ancestors about
| 600,000 years ago.
|
| "We" ( _Homo sapiens_ ) did not invent fire. Our
| predecessor species were already using it.
|
| _Firestarting_ is harder to pin down and may be within
| the scope of _homo_ evolution.
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_h
| uman...>
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human#Evolution>
| comprev wrote:
| So who's the fire starter - the twisted fire starter?
| Cordiali wrote:
| Perhaps it's always been burning, since the world's been
| turning?
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| That's wild! Thanks for sharing. I didn't realize these
| things went so far back. So are you saying these were
| straight up non-human primates using tools? Or is this all
| traceable to our lineage?
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Even today there's plenty of non humans (and non-primate)
| tool use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_use_by_non-
| humans.
|
| In terms of tools by homonins, there is a roughly ~3million
| year history of stone tool use by various species, and the
| main thing preventing that date from being pushed further
| back is the difficulty in discerning between stones that
| have been shaped intentionally and those shaped by natural
| forces.
| ryan_j_naughton wrote:
| The first identified tools were 3.3 million years ago,
| which is before the homo genus emerges. Thus, those were
| either by Australopithecus afarensis or by a yet
| unidentified hominid species -- they were still very likely
| our ancestors (but technically TBD).
|
| Then around 2-2.5 million years ago you get the first homo
| species in the genus homo such as Homo habilis and they
| created the Oldowan tool culture.
|
| Both Australopithecus afarensis and Homo habilis are our
| ancestors -- however they are also the ancestors of other
| homo lines that diverged from us that we are not
| descendents of (which are now extinct).
|
| People often forget how widespread and varied the Homo
| genus was before all our cousin species went extinct
| (likely in part due to us).[1] Homo erectus colonized the
| entire old world very effectively 1.5 million years ago!
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo#/media/File:The_homi
| nin_f...
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| So cool! Thanks for the info.
| mmooss wrote:
| Last I knew, the 3.3 mya evidence from the site Lomekwi 3
| in Kenya was debatable, though a serious possibility, and
| the 2.58 mya evidence from the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania
| was considered the sure thing.
|
| Also, more than primates use tools: Many corvids (crows,
| ravens, etc.) do, as do other animals. Look up New
| Caledonian Crows in particular.
|
| But don't take all this from HN commenters debating each
| other; find some authoritative sources. A recent review
| article in a scientific journal would be a great start.
| Google Scholar lets you search for review articles.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Most recently (January 19, 2026): cows
|
| >Flexible use of a multi-purpose tool by a cow
|
| https://www.cell.com/current-
| biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(25)...
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| Did they look like this?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_tools#/media/File:Cow_T
| ool...
| catigula wrote:
| This reminds me of "koko the gorilla can speak English"
| stuff. Need to disambiguate learned mimickry from the
| real thing.
| mockbuild wrote:
| Multi-purpose egocentric tool use.
| layer8 wrote:
| We are talking about tool manufacture here, however, not
| just about tool use.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| That's a difficult distinction to make - at which point
| does tool selection differ from modification for use as a
| tool - any animal that strips the leaves off a twig in
| order to use it as a tool has manufactured the tool.
| mmooss wrote:
| The people of the Olduvan industry from 2.58 mya tools
| (the earliest accepted by consensus [0]) manufactured
| their tools - that's exactly what archaeologists are
| talking about.
|
| Chimps and New Caledonian Crows (and maybe some other
| animals) also manufacture their tools, at least
| sometimes, BTW. IIRC the crows strip sticks and bend them
| into hooks to grab at objects.
|
| Why would someone imply otherwise if they don't know?
| What are people trying to prove in this discussion?
|
| [0] There's strong evidence of 3.3 mya; see other
| comments.
| layer8 wrote:
| Not sure what you are asking. My point was that animals
| using objects as tools is a different thing than the
| Oldowan stone tool manufacturing "industry". I wasn't
| saying that tool manufacture is exclusive to primates.
| However, pointing out mere tool _use_ by non-primates is
| sort of beside the point of the TFA topic, IMO.
| mmooss wrote:
| > My point was that animals using objects as tools is a
| different thing than the Oldowan stone tool manufacturing
| "industry".
|
| Agreed, though the dividing line is tricky.
|
| (Your prior comment didn't say 95% of that; for example,
| it doesn't mention animals. Because the parent comments
| were focused on human ancestors, that's what I thought
| you were addressing.)
| foxglacier wrote:
| I think the whole interest in tool making is we're
| looking for clues to intelligence and tools are just one
| of the few things they left behind. It's much less
| satisfying to discover an animal's tool making is an
| instinctual behavior like burrowing animals making their
| own holes to sleep in, than that they worked it out using
| more generalized thinking.
| zahlman wrote:
| > The first identified tools were 3.3 million years ago
|
| I assume these are made of stone? What kind of tools?
| stackghost wrote:
| I believe the evidence is animal bones that show marks
| from butchery, as well as actual sharpened stone flakes
| and other things found primarily in what is now Kenya:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomekwi
| throwup238 wrote:
| Our last common ancestor with our closest non-human
| primates (Pan genus) diverged about 6-8 million years ago,
| so what constitutes "human" is murky and I don't think
| archaeologists give the matter much thought. "Human" means
| homo sapiens, "archaic human" means a few subspecies like
| neanderthals up to about 600 kYA, and the rest are just
| "hominins".
|
| We have both observational and archaeological evidence of
| tool use in chimpanzees, macaques, and capuchins so it's a
| pretty widespread behavior. I think the archaeological
| evidence for monkeys only goes back about four thousand
| years but thats because we havent studied the issue as much
| in archaeology.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Tools predate homo sapiens (which emerged about 300 kYA)_
|
| I'm going to use a charged word because Jane Goodall used it.
|
| Goodall asserted that humans and chimpanzees (and wolves) are
| unique among animals in that we have a genocidal tendency
| [1]. When a group attacks us (or has "land and resources" we
| want) we don't just chase them off. We exterminate them. We
| expend great resources to track them down to ensure they
| cannot threaten us.
|
| One reading of pre-history is that we had a number of
| hominids that were fine sharing the world, and humans, who
| were not. (I've seen the uncanny valley hypothesised as a
| human response to non-human hominids, as well as other humans
| carrying transmissible disfiguring diseases.)
|
| [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/06/do
| es-...
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| The worst part of reading this thread is I know I won't be
| able to google image anything interesting related to "non-
| human hominids" :( Your comment was oddly depressing lol.
| Real "are we the baddies?" moment this morning.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _won 't be able to google image anything interesting
| related to "non-human hominids"_
|
| We were a large family [1].
|
| > _Real "are we the baddies?" moment_
|
| We were animals. We acted in accordance with our natures.
| Wolves and chimpanzees aren't baddies any more than bees
| or hyenas. Nature is brutal.
|
| Today, however, we are more than our natures. We have the
| capacity to criticize it when it arises in ways we
| disapprove of. In a certain sense, humans have a unique
| capacity to reduce suffering in a way without precedent
| in Earth's natural history.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo
| reactordev wrote:
| As equal to their ability to cause it. It's this
| dichotomy that makes us, human. We have the power of
| destruction, the power of criticism, the power of
| nurturing, and the power to advance. We are amazing
| animals.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| You might say we have eaten the fruit of the tree of
| knowledge but not the tree of wisdom. So although we can
| act against our base nature we don't always.
| staplers wrote:
| humans have a unique capacity to reduce suffering in a
| way
|
| With low cost to our wellbeing as well. Which I think is
| the main point. Our advances in logistical transportation
| and food production allow us to be kinder and more
| plentiful than ever before. Unfortunately we see
| "instinctual" echoes of past strife seemingly arise from
| minor inconveniences (those ppl do something that annoys
| me).
| unfitted2545 wrote:
| That's kinda ridiculous to think we're not animals
| anymore, our nature is to use intellect for survival (and
| though we know we can reduce suffering further we choose
| not to).
| ncr100 wrote:
| It is a mind bender, yes.
|
| Your argument, written here and As far as I understand it
| at the moment, goes along with the other argument that
| everything is a simulation, or that everything that we do
| is preordained based upon physics. All mindbenders.
|
| I want to believe that I have the ability to make an
| educated decision when faced e.g. with impulses to
| suppress or oppress others, I do know that I can consider
| ramifications and benefits outside of those which
| directly impact me.
|
| So, perhaps it's better to say, we can be unanimal like
| rather than simply not animal, at all? What do you think?
| pinnochio wrote:
| > Your argument, written here and As far as I understand
| it at the moment, goes along with the other argument that
| everything is a simulation,
|
| What?
|
| This isn't a mindbender. You're just drawing lines.
|
| Edit: I slightly misread your comment as advocating that
| we're not animals. However, whether one describes us as
| not animals or able to be "unanimal like" is still a
| matter of drawing lines.
| unfitted2545 wrote:
| I do believe in determinism.
|
| I see what you mean by being able to consider the worth
| of harming something for your own gain. But doesn't this
| apply to all animals? If a bear was hungry I'm sure they
| would happily eat you, but they would probably think
| twice if they weren't. Same for humans, it's just we have
| our technologies now to prop us up and not have to really
| think about survival (which is in our nature).
|
| The main thing I'm curious to hear your thoughts on is
| what are we if not animals? Gods? That's surely
| completely relative, like an anteater to an ant.
| pinnochio wrote:
| > Today, however, we are more than our natures.
|
| This really depends on how you define nature. Attempts to
| delineate what is and is not nature tend to be motivated.
| WarmWash wrote:
| Another way of looking at it is that humans (and
| apparently our close brethren) are tribal, don't give up
| fighting easily, and can generationally hold grudges.
|
| Invaders of days gone by knew that even the young kids
| would grow up to "avenge their people", so to avoid
| problems (violence/killing against their tribe) in 10-15
| years, it's better to just totally erase the population.
| keybored wrote:
| Of course we are the baddies. That's the narrative every
| time people need to defend terrible behavior lead by
| sociopaths: but that's just human nature. Very practical
| fallback.
| jama211 wrote:
| It's an interesting interpretation, but it's sounds all
| very unsubstantiated. Speculation it seems to me.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _sounds all very unsubstantiated. Speculation it seems
| to me_
|
| What part of the study strikes you as unsubstantiated?
| rhelz wrote:
| Every part is unsubstantiated. For starters, for the vast
| majority of H. Sapiens existence on earth--from 300,000
| years ago to about 45,000 years ago, we shared the world
| with 4 or 5 other hominids that we know about.
| (Neanderthal, Denisoven, H. Luzonensis, H. Floresiensis,
| and still perhaps a few H. Erectus, and no doubt even
| more we haven't found yet.)
|
| That's 250,000 years of coexistence. We know that we
| sheboinked with at least two other species, probably
| more, because we still carry their genes to this day. So
| much so that it couldn't have been just a sheboink or
| two; we sheboinked over extended periods of time, i.e. we
| formed families with Neanderthals and Denisovens.
|
| We have no evidence of warfare between the species. I.E.
| We have found no Neanderthal skull with an arrowhead in
| it, for example. Besides the fact that we are the only
| ones left, I don't see any substantiation at all.
|
| It is a mystery why they are not still here. But the last
| 50,000 years, since the end of the last Ice Age, has been
| very hard on human species, for some reason. We are the
| only humans left, what every got them might get us too if
| we let it.
| shakna wrote:
| > We have no evidence of warfare between the species.
|
| Thats not correct.
|
| We have a neanderthal slain by spear, at a time and place
| where it was only carried by modern humans. [0]
|
| This isn't a singular event. We have a history on
| injuries consistent with war, on both sides.
|
| Yes, we "sheboinked". We also took women as prizes of war
| and raped them. As humanity has continued to do for most
| of their history.
|
| Sure, the story is probably more complex. Some tribes at
| war, others at trade. Some who intermingle, and others
| who raged. That's... Just history of a people. That's
| normal.
|
| But we absolutely have a history of war between the
| species.
|
| [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii
| /S00472...
| popalchemist wrote:
| Who says these were homosapien tools?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Given enough time of human survival, the only species left
| on this planet will be ones that are aesthetically pleasing
| to us
|
| Everything selectively bred due to environmental or
| artificial pressures to have big eyes, big heads, high
| vocal sounds, attributes of human babies
|
| It is very strange and an aberration amongst species, one
| being tolerating other beings because of their
| entertainment value and the joy they give from looking at
| them, but seems to be consistent and validate what's
| happened over eons of homo sapien propagation
| dpc050505 wrote:
| Animals being tasty is a trait we heavily select for. I
| don't think chickens have any of the traits you describe
| but they're certainly not at risk of extinction.
| staplers wrote:
| Army ants do something similar as well.
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ants-and-the-
| art-...
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> (and wolves)_
|
| And lions. And banded mongooses. And meerkats. And ants.
| Lots and lots of ant species - they're actually by far the
| worst, following colony pheromones to the end of the earth
| just to get a single ant. Ants that aren't genocidal to
| their own species tend to be some of the worst invasive
| species (like Argentinian ant supercolonies).
|
| I love me some Jane Goodall as much as the next guy but
| that hypothesis is not taken seriously by primatologists
| and using the word "genocidal" in this context would get
| you laughed out of the room. Lethal intergroup aggression,
| coalitionary killing, and raiding are all different aspects
| of violent behavior in animals and hominins are far from
| unique in demonstrating them.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Agree with your this-is-not-unique-to-primates take. But
| why is genocidal not accurate?
| nomel wrote:
| I think this is part of the reason humans are so stupid
| during any sort of divisions where "sides" emerge. To be
| able to do commit this genocide, you need a very ugly
| "switch" in your head that can make your actions
| justifiable/right. I think this switch is the same,
| emotional, unthinking one that makes some people so
| religion about teams sports, phone OS, political alignment,
| etc.
|
| Related, I think this is also the mechanism for how
| _religion_ tends to stabilize societies /give them
| cohesion. Rather than having an eventual positive feedback
| loop of division, the division is placed between some type
| of "good" and "evil" rather than your neighbor. The "us vs
| them" division that switch craves is put on something more
| metaphysical (and sometimes a net benefit, like defining
| evil as behavior destructive to societies).
| Incipient wrote:
| >going to use a charged word
|
| I honestly have no clue what word you used was 'charged'.
| Considering any of those words charged makes me worry how
| far political correctness has gone! (I'm assuming, I
| suppose, politically charged?)
| api wrote:
| Sometimes when I think about this it makes me wonder if we
| should take the dark forest hypothesis seriously (re: Fermi
| paradox).
|
| Not only are we the only species to reach this kind of
| technology but among humans the first group to reach space
| was the Nazis. Today the innovation in that area seems
| driven by militaristic states and by people who seem
| ideologically adjacent. In other words it's driven by very
| aggressive territorial members of one of the most
| aggressive territorial species.
|
| We can't generalize from one example of evolution, but if
| this is indicative of a common pattern then there might be
| some scary MFs out there. Our radio signals have been
| spreading for a while, so for all we know something is on
| its way to cleanse the universe of all forms of life that
| offend its god (or whatever its genocidal rationalizations
| is).
|
| If this is true then we die. There is zero chance of
| resisting something with the technology to travel the stars
| and perhaps a million years or more head start on us.
|
| I had this thought when I saw the ideological turn (or mask
| removal) of certain people in the space industry. I found
| it metaphysically disturbing. Again... if there is other
| advanced life and if this is the pattern of how you evolve
| to become spacefaring, then we are doomed.
| Jzush wrote:
| It's so cool and strange to think we have examples of tools
| that literally predate humans.
| OJFord wrote:
| The submission's subheading seems to imply that there was a
| gap where homo* emerged but weren't using tools then though?
| I can't read the article or copy-paste it due to pay wall,
| but it says something along the lines of the find suggesting
| our human ancestors were using tools longer ago than we
| thought.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| Way back when I was in high school doing history (Money for
| Nothing was on heavy rotation on the radio and Bob from
| Stranger Things was still Mikey from the Goonies), our
| teacher explained that there was evidence of stone tools
| being used by early hominids, then nothing much except
| maybe fragments of rock that may have been used as hammers
| or axe heads, and then into an era where simple bronze
| tools emerged. What archeologists believed, she said, was
| that people went from "big chunk of rock" to "small
| delicate bit of rock tied with strips of animal hide to a
| stick" to "big chunk of metal", and the wood and animal
| hide had simply rotted away. There would be this whole lost
| chunk of technology.
|
| And she told us that would likely happen again, there would
| be a gap where our technology proved to be insufficiently
| durable to last throughout history. Unsurprisingly not
| everyone in the class thought this was likely, but I
| figured it was possible.
|
| Anyway, I could go on about the archeology of tech all
| night, but I've got to figure out how to get the photos off
| this Kodak DC25 camera card. Something about a DLL from the
| original installer that you wrap in a Linux library? Can't
| remember.
| eru wrote:
| > And she told us that would likely happen again, there
| would be a gap where our technology proved to be
| insufficiently durable to last throughout history.
| Unsurprisingly not everyone in the class thought this was
| likely, but I figured it was possible.
|
| I heard that fear being muttered mostly about everything
| going digital and that's much harder for archaeologists
| to dig up than paper or stone tablets.
|
| However, that's all nonsense, of course: the stuff that
| people bother to write down is seldom all that
| interesting. Who cares about who was king or whatever?
| The real juicy bits are all in our garbage dumps, and we
| are producing garbage that'll last much longer than
| anything the ancients could muster. What with all our
| metal, glass, plastic etc.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| >I can't read the article or copy-paste it due to pay wall
|
| Try this:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/science/archaeology-
| neand...
| alecbz wrote:
| > Even this evidence of woodworking is largely unremarkable
| .... this find is most notable for its preservation.
|
| This somewhat contradicts the subheading, no?
|
| > The finding, along with the discovery of a 500,000-year-old
| hammer made of bone, indicates that our human ancestors were
| making tools even earlier than archaeologists thought.
| j_bum wrote:
| We have evidence that non Homo sapiens bipeds (e.g.,
| Neanderthals, Homo habilis) used tools far before we came onto
| the scene. A long lineage of hominin species came before
| humans!
| Insanity wrote:
| And even today, our species' cousins (Chimps) are rudimentary
| tool users. Recently saw a documentary where they evolved
| their 'tools' to get honey from a 1-stick approach to a
| 3-stick approach.
| abetusk wrote:
| As others mentioned, tool use wasn't restricted to homo
| sapiens. I think this makes sense, no? We didn't spontaneously
| use tools, it must have evolved incrementally in some way.
|
| I think we see shades of this today. Bearded Capuchin monkeys
| chain a complex series of tasks and use tools to break nuts.
| From a brief documentary clip I saw [0], they first take the
| nut and strip away the outer layer of skin, leave it dry out in
| the sun for a week, then find a large soft-ish rock as the
| anvil with a heavier smaller rock to break open the nut. So
| they had to not only figure out that nuts need to be pre-
| shelled and dried, but that they needed a softer rock for the
| anvil and harder rock for the hammer. They also need at least
| some type of bipedal ability to carry the rock in the first
| place and use it as a hammer.
|
| Apparently some white-faced Capuchins have figured out that
| they can soak nuts in water to soften it before hammering it
| open [1].
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFWTXU2jE14
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7sJq2XUiy8
| dh2022 wrote:
| This process also display coordination within a group and
| memory. Quite impressive.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| You might be old enough to have been taught that Humans are
| tool-using apes. That's tragically incomplete: lots of apes use
| tools. Birds use tools. And now, cows use tools!
|
| Cow tools: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0n127y74go
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_tools
| drakythe wrote:
| I was homeschooled in a particular conservative area. Much of
| what I have been taught was... woefully inadequate, we'll
| say. Lots of my learning has come in university and
| afterwards, so what I've picked up is pretty obviously
| incomplete and leaves me with many unknown unknowns in this
| area. Today has begun filling in many of those gaps so they
| get to be known unknowns now!
| hearsathought wrote:
| > Lots of my learning has come in university and afterwards
|
| That's true for pretty much everybody. Homeschooled or not.
| You think everyone shocked by this news was all
| homeschooled?
| dpc050505 wrote:
| I'm relearning a lot of stuff I was told visiting natural
| history museums as a kid reading this thread and the
| linked articles. I doubt I'm the only person in this
| forum who had a couple of educated parents who wanted
| their kids to learn more than what is taught in basic
| public k-12 curriculum.
| drakythe wrote:
| No, but I do think it more likely they got a more
| accurate world history class somewhere along the line. I
| was taught creationism thanks to the conservatism nature
| of my family and the area I grew up in. It took a long
| while to know and accept the world (and universe) is as
| old as it is.
| zahlman wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veronika_(cow) might be a
| better Wikipedia link.
|
| Honestly I would have expected a pig or horse to be
| discovered to use tools, rather than a cow. Cattle are
| generally... not thought of as particularly intelligent.
| BirAdam wrote:
| Well, most cattle aren't given much to stimulate them, and
| they're bred for meat production and complacency. People
| aren't exactly looking to make the life of cattle fun or
| enjoyable.
| fragmede wrote:
| That's the goal of https://www.cowbrushes.com/store !
| They provide mental stimulation and scritches for cows.
| Results in extra milk, too.
| thechao wrote:
| Then ... you find out that smoking was introduced to the new
| world in the 16th c, and indigenous North Americans didn't
| start using the bow & arrow ubiquitously until _after_ the year
| 1000. But! Native North Americans were using copper
| contemporaneously with the old world.
| llmslave wrote:
| The big secret: certain pools of ancient humans have been smart
| for alot longer than modern evolutionary theory wants to admit
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| This isn't a problem for evolutionary theory. It's literally
| a necessary prediction of it. Most recent common ancestor of
| humans and chimps is 5-10 million years ago. Since we have
| observed tool usage in modern chimps and lots of very
| complicated tool use in humans, the necessary prediction is
| that some amount of tool use goes back at least ~5-10 million
| years, with increased complexity roughly tracking with the
| continuous increase in braincase size.
| foxglacier wrote:
| Being in a common ancestor is certainly compatible with
| evolution but it's not necessary because it could have
| evolved independently in each branch.
| PinkSheep wrote:
| I don't understand why you think it'd be an issue?
|
| Dumbed down understanding of mine: evolutionary theory
| predicts that graph goes from (0.1; 0) to (very high; in a
| million years). X axis: years, Y axis: progress or evolution.
| The only difference such discoveries make is to further
| refine the slope of the graph. Was the development linear or
| exponential? How fast did it progress? Obviously, in the past
| 500 years we didn't change as humans but our technological
| progress accelerated beyond belief.
| trebligdivad wrote:
| There's a 476k year old wooden structure in Zambia, and
| includes some tools somewhere around 3x0k years old:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalambo_structure
|
| Fascinating stuff!
| caymanjim wrote:
| Others already clarified the confusion about your question.
| Just wanted to note that the HN audience is not going to hug-
| of-death nytimes.com.
| an0malous wrote:
| There is archaeological evidence of tools going back even
| further, potentially over a million years, but it's ignored for
| the usual reasons of dogma and not conveniently fitting into the
| paradigm of the current priestly class. I'd highly recommend this
| talk Michael Cremo (author of "Forbidden Archaeology") gave for
| this "Authors at Google" program in 2014:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKfGC3P9KoQ
| lmf4lol wrote:
| why do you think would this info be surpressed?
| bflesch wrote:
| "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
|
| As long as there is low number of samples with such age you
| should always assume methodological mistakes in measurement
| an0malous wrote:
| I think it just doesn't fit into the accepted timeline so
| it's mostly ignored. This is a common pattern with scientific
| discovery where evidence that contradicts the prevailing
| paradigm is ignored and builds up until it can no longer be
| ignored and causes a paradigm shift. This idea comes from The
| Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn.
| fsckboy wrote:
| so you're saying archeology and anthropology advance one
| uncovered ancient gravesite at a time?
| naikrovek wrote:
| I think you're making that up. It is widely _known_ that
| tools predate humans.
| 3RTB297 wrote:
| I'm not the person you asked this of, but I've worked in
| museums and research settings and can lob a response your
| way.
|
| Ultimately, it's that scientists are humans, too. Despite
| some of them really making their research data-forward,
| things like tenure, career, funding, and even who would
| publish your work now and in the future all create normal
| human environments that reward small, incremental changes to
| a body of knowledge that don't upset the apple cart, not
| discoveries that suggest huge changes. In fact, large changes
| and discoveries can be resisted and denied further research
| in favor of the status quo.
|
| This is not a new phenomenon by any means:
|
| Both warm-blooded dinosaurs and the Chicxulub impact were
| both theories dismissed as fringe for decades before
| overwhelming evidence led to them being accepted as likely.
| In no small way thanks to Jurassic Park.
|
| Recall that eugenics and phrenology both used to be widely
| accepted scientific "fact."
|
| 100 fairly prominent scientists signed a letter stating
| emphatically that Einstein's Theory of Relatively was
| categorically wrong and should be retracted.
|
| Plate tectonics was seen as fanciful crackpot musings for
| decades. The author of the original theory died 30 years
| before plate tectonics was even considered possible.
|
| Germ theory was dismissed for most of Louis Pasteur's
| lifetime, despite being able to literally show people yeast
| in a microscope.
|
| Helicentrism has a storied past.
|
| Quantum theory was also denied heavily at first. Now it saves
| photos to our hard drives.
|
| And how many times has the earliest dates of hominids and
| tool use and human thresholds of development been pushed back
| by tens of thousands of years?
|
| This is not an exhaustive list, by any means.
|
| So we have ancient examples and modern ones - and everything
| in between. So the level of education or scientific progress
| or equipment are not the cause. Humans are. Humans do this
| all the time. So until overwhelming evidence surfaces, which
| can take decades or longer, claims like this shouldn't be
| dismissed out of hand until proven solidly in error. A theory
| is a theory, so let it be a theory.
| mmooss wrote:
| > I've worked in museums and research settings
|
| You've worked in those settings, and you think
| archaeologists reject tool use older than 1 mya?
|
| Also, you don't understand that science is a process, based
| on evidence, and revision is an essential part of that
| process? Archaeology especially advances regularly, because
| evidence can be relatively very rare. If they weren't
| revising it, it would mean the whole research enterprise -
| to expand knowledge - was failing.
|
| > how many times has the earliest dates of hominids and
| tool use and human thresholds of development been pushed
| back by tens of thousands of years?
|
| I don't know, how many times? Tool use is universally
| believed, in the field, to have begun at least 2.58 million
| years ago, and with strong evidence for 3.3 mya. Tens of
| thousands of years isn't in the debate. See this subthread:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46782072
| jrflowers wrote:
| >So until overwhelming evidence surfaces, which can take
| decades or longer, claims like this shouldn't be dismissed
| out of hand until proven solidly in error. A theory is a
| theory, so let it be a theory.
|
| I like how the word "overwhelming" is doing a lot of heavy
| lifting here.
| dpc050505 wrote:
| It took about 30 years for every geologist to reach consensus
| on tectonic plates and continental drift. Old heads who'd
| invested a lot of their credibility arguing against it had a
| lot to lose by admitting they were wrong, so they refused to
| do it.
|
| Bill Bryson's book A Short History of Nearly Everything is
| where I'm taking that from. It's a great read and shows all
| the ways in which scientists failed to see what was under
| their nose for decades before finally figuring out, which
| makes one wonder what's currently ripe for the picking.
| drakythe wrote:
| That book name is... off putting, and his wikipedia article
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Cremo) isn't encouraging
| in a quick scan...
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| It instantly destroys all credibility. Any serious theory
| would present itself on its own merits rather than going for
| the victimhood angle. When you _title_ your book in such a
| way as to push the perceived victimhood to the forefront, it
| indicates that there is no convincing evidence and therefore
| the only option left to you is to play at the conspiracy
| angle, cursing the shadowy figures who are suppressing the
| "forbidden truth".
| an0malous wrote:
| Why not just watch the talk and hear his argument from
| himself?
|
| Wikipedia has a bias against everything outside of mainstream
| academia, there are activist groups like Guerrilla Skeptics
| that go through articles and rewrite them to undermine
| anything remotely fringe. It's not as objective as people
| like to think it is.
| drakythe wrote:
| Because charismatic people can make us believe just about
| anything, and if we think we're immune to that we just
| haven't met the right charismatic person. I like to do some
| searching when something jumps out at me, like his book
| name, to get some background before I invest more time into
| the topic.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Because life is short and we have to prioritize the talks
| we watch. And if you've seen enough bullshit, you can smell
| it coming. So if someone gives strong signals that they're
| full of it, we don't bother.
| ecshafer wrote:
| The self professed skeptic community is pretty extreme.
| Their arguments so often go beyond occams razor that is
| essentially absurdism to get around anything non-material
| or unexplained by current science / thinking.
| w0de0 wrote:
| Can you imagine was a useless mishmash of lies Wikipedia
| would be if it did not have a bias for mainstream
| academia!? Wither epistemology?
| throwup238 wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| > _Am I taking crazy pills, or are you?_
|
| Please edit out swipes, as the site guidelines ask
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html),
| regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.
|
| Your comment would be fine without that first bit.
| mmooss wrote:
| > There is archaeological evidence of tools going back even
| further, potentially over a million years, but it's ignored for
| the usual reasons of dogma and not conveniently fitting into
| the paradigm of the current priestly class.
|
| ? I don't think you can find anyone in archaeology who says
| tool use began less than 1 million years ago (mya). Maybe you
| mean something else?
|
| The univeral consensus in archaeology says tools emerged either
| 3.3 mya, which is still subject to debate last I knew, and
| certainly by 2.58 mya - the Odowan industry famously discovered
| by the Leakeys in the Oldovai Gorge in Tanzania, in 1969.
|
| The same consensus continues with the development of the more
| advanced Acheulean industry ~1.76 mya, which dominated until ~
| 400,000 years ago (arguably the most successful technology
| ever).
| alsetmusic wrote:
| There's bound to be a lot of vital archeological evidence of the
| development of humans and our cousins below the water. Past
| peoples probably lived near the coasts and the rising water would
| have obscured or destroyed a lot of the evidence of their
| existence. I think a lot about what must be or have been just out
| of reach of our current studies.
| throwup238 wrote:
| That's rapidly changing. Underwater archaeology has been going
| through a mini-Renaissance in the last thirty years thanks to
| multibeam and side scan sonar. Now with the proliferation of
| underwater drones capable of high-resolution 3D photogrammetry,
| that is rapidly accelerating into a full blown revolution. As
| usual the problem is lack of funding to do excavations. There
| are far more known sites than there are funds to study them.
| HocusLocus wrote:
| I have always believed that the human evolution consensus which
| is usually based upon finds of advanced toolmaking in absence of
| culture cues, to be questionable by orders of magnitude. So it
| seemed natural to simply double generational concepts of the
| village along a trade route, from ~500kya (like the Nile) to 1
| million YA as a hyperstable span of evolution of the 'trade route
| village'. I even wrote a book about it
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtxgpaXp9vA that might seem like
| whole fiction. But science seems not to ask, how many times might
| we have started over?
| tootie wrote:
| That's ridiculous. Scientists absolutely ask these questions.
| We just don't have the answers so we don't make assumptions. It
| is implicitly assumed there is an enormous amount of proto- and
| pre-human culture and technology that is undiscovered or
| undiscoverable. We have very long known that hominins made
| tools, art and structures out of organic material that has
| decayed beyond our ability to detect.
| dang wrote:
| [stub for offtopicness]
| eigenspace wrote:
| Website appears to be down from too much traffic
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://imgur.com/a/1cIZVDi
| itsamario wrote:
| God made things earlier than previously thought. Ha
| jolt42 wrote:
| Finding red blood cells in 70 million year old bones.
| Still find that incomprehensible. Not sure King George
| didn't kill a dinosaur.
| drakythe wrote:
| For anyone else absolutely baffled by this statement: htt
| ps://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/09/75-million-y
| ...
|
| Red blood cells, and collagen from dinosaur bones. With
| the idea that even current museum hosted bones might have
| more??? Today is a wild day for me.
| metalman wrote:
| It gets wilder, all of the finds mentioned so far are
| stuff I have heard of, then there are the intentional
| burials from millions of years agoby a tiny hominum in
| SA, deap in a cave complex that requires extream cave
| crawling to get into, and also from SA, there is strong
| evidence for the manufacture of red pigment @400kyr ago.
| And if you like, you can wander around certain sea sides
| and pick, little tiny dino trackways that have fallen out
| of the cliff, :)
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| > then there are the intentional burials from millions of
| years agoby a tiny hominum in SA, deap in a cave complex
| that requires extream cave crawling to get into
|
| This is very heavily disputed and very much not consensus
| opinion. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_naledi#P
| ossible_burials and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science
| /article/abs/pii/S00472...)
| Salgat wrote:
| Ironically even archive.is just has the 503 page cached.
| eigenspace wrote:
| Yeah, that was me. I threw the link into archive.is to
| check if it had a snapshot, but it just created a shanpshot
| of the 503 before I could figure out how to cancel it.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Top box: my url is alive and I want to archive it's
| contents
|
| Bottom box: I want to search the archive for saved
| snapshots
|
| I have defaulted to using the bottom box first, since
| it's usually much faster
| barbazoo wrote:
| I actually saw the website, pictures of the tools and text
| and everything before it gave me the database error message.
| It would have been totally fine.
| wumms wrote:
| Website has problems, NYT version:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/science/archaeology-neand...
| cpncrunch wrote:
| That is paywalled. Try https://archive.ph/mHlUT
| hahahahhaah wrote:
| Recommend mods change it to this (or parent)
| dang wrote:
| Thanks, we've switched to that from
| https://archaeologymag.com/2026/01/430000-year-old-wooden-
| to... and put a couple extra links in the toptext.
| Insanity wrote:
| It hit the HN hug of death it seems :(
| SSLy wrote:
| the site never loads
| khalic wrote:
| I can't be the only one that saw the aforementioned tools and
| thought: did I misread stool?
| riazrizvi wrote:
| You're the only one.
| notorandit wrote:
| I wonder how would we react with tools dating back to, say, 5MY
| ago ...
|
| That would shake our knowledge from the foundations.
| uriegas wrote:
| I don't think so, have you read 'The Bonobo and the atheist'?
| Humans are not the only ones using tools and in reality there
| isn't much difference between humans and animals. The
| conclusion I get from the book is that the only difference is
| religion. Although, I have a feeling that humans do have a more
| developed intellect (problem solving) but this was not explored
| in the book.
| marcd35 wrote:
| 5 Million years ago would be insane... but what about..
|
| 5 BILLION years ago...
| croisillon wrote:
| we might find some, in 4,5 billion years
| mkl wrote:
| No it wouldn't, as we already think it's pretty likely.
| Chimpanzees use tools, so our most recent common ancestor with
| them, something like 6 million years ago, may well have used
| tools too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_use_by_non-
| humans,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee%E2%80%93human_last_...
| melenaboija wrote:
| Ok, since I moved to the US from Europe a few years ago my
| perception of wood has changed a lot, especially for
| construction. Seeing this reinforces my view.
|
| Wood lasts for fucking ever under the proper conditions. Old
| construction in Europe often only had the beams made of wood, and
| I always thought that was orders of magnitude more durable than
| wooden houses, like thousands of years vs decades. I don't think
| that's true anymore.
|
| And this might be one of the few environmentally friendly
| decisions that Americans got better than Europeans, I guess. Wood
| is still prevalent in construction here, and as far as I know
| concrete and cement production are quite bad.
|
| BTW, I'm a total ignorant about all this so just intuition and
| probably wrong
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| It's not totally a "decision" on the part of the Americans to
| use a lot of wood in construction. It's just that America has
| tons of space, including space useful for growing Douglas Fir
| and Southern Yellow Pine, which then can be turned in to 2x4s
| and other construction lumber.
|
| Most of Europe long ago exhausted easily accessible natural
| forest resources, and where it's not densely populated tends to
| prefer using land to do other stuff (like grow food). Hence,
| stone and concrete and similar materials in European
| construction.
| bdamm wrote:
| While some lumber production happens in the United States,
| most lumber is imported from Canada. That's because while the
| USA does have good tracts of land on which lumber is grown,
| Canada has much, much more. This is why you see "Made in
| Canada" stamped on quite a lot of plywood and plenty of timer
| used in residential construction.
|
| The part that I don't quite know how to make sense of is why
| Canadian producers seem to have a near monopoly on sandpaper
| products.
| barbacoa wrote:
| >concrete and cement production are quite bad.
|
| Modern concrete construction uses iron rebar liberally. That
| means every concrete structure built today will crack and
| crumble in a few hundred years at most, as the iron absorbs
| oxygen, it swells from the rust. Which is a shame, roman
| concrete buildings without rebar will still be standing 1000s
| of years from now.
| nashashmi wrote:
| How about petrified wood? Would that also crack and crumble
| in the long run?
| foxglacier wrote:
| Roman construction was also much less efficient because they
| had no material (besides wood) capable of carrying load in
| tension. Rebar allows us to make cheap practical structures
| that are impossible with just concrete - roman style or not.
| bdamm wrote:
| It would be quite fascinating to see what kind of structure
| we could produce if we decided to make the longest lasting
| cement structures we could create with modern technology,
| and assuming minimal maintenance over the lifetime of the
| building. A one-and-done kind of structure.
|
| I bet we could do fairly well. Hundreds, maybe even
| thousands of years. We've learned a lot about how to form
| exceptionally long lasting cement. We just choose not to do
| it that way, most of the time.
| shay_ker wrote:
| The thing I'm continually surprised by is the usage of obsidian
| by nearly every ancient-ish civilization. The usage of bow &
| arrow predates farming, insane.
| tim333 wrote:
| I guess that before metal working, obsidian would have been the
| best knife edge available.
| caymanjim wrote:
| It's a far, far better knife edge than metal even now. It's
| used in some specialized scalpels. It's just fragile.
| KaseKun wrote:
| Not really that insane, hunting is a much faster reward cycle
| than farming. On the surface, it makes sense that tools for
| hunting are produced earlier than tools for farming
| joe8756438 wrote:
| Estimates will continue to go earlier, and more things that were,
| or are, alive will be considered exceptional. Seems to be a
| function of looking.
| tiku wrote:
| Now find the tools used by the Egyptians or the people before
| that lived there and made the tool markings..
| lugu wrote:
| > The finding, along with the discovery of a 500,000-year-old
| hammer made of bone, indicates that our human ancestors were
| making tools even earlier than archaeologists *thought*.
|
| I am tired of this. No. Archeologist only claim what they have
| discovered. They don't speculate because they work based on
| evidences. Journalists should better. This wording sounds like
| archeologists were wrong. That only fuel the narrative that
| layman's opinion is more informed than professionals.
| niobe wrote:
| True but every science headline is misleading, loaded or
| exaggerated. My pet peeve "X found where it should not exist".
| What they mean is "scientists are pleased because there's some
| new evidence that is not explained by their current models and
| that means they get to improve their models which is the goal
| of science anyway, so pretty much just another day for science
| but glad to keep you updated"
| guywithahat wrote:
| What's incredible about this too is they found it in England,
| which means they had to first build a boat to get there and leave
| the tools on the island
| brightbeige wrote:
| England wasn't always an island
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland
| emeril wrote:
| maybe the trump administration can learn something from these
| tools to offset the 10k STEM PhDs that have resigned and moved
| onto to greener pastures...
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