{"id":22185,"date":"2023-09-20T23:50:53","date_gmt":"2023-09-21T06:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/this-simple-log-structure-may-be-the-oldest-example-of-early-humans-building-with-wood\/"},"modified":"2023-09-20T23:50:55","modified_gmt":"2023-09-21T06:50:55","slug":"this-simple-log-structure-may-be-the-oldest-example-of-early-humans-building-with-wood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/this-simple-log-structure-may-be-the-oldest-example-of-early-humans-building-with-wood\/","title":{"rendered":"This simple log structure may be the oldest example of early humans building with wood"},"content":{"rendered":"

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NEW YORK \u2013 Researchers have uncovered a simple structure from the Stone Age that may be the oldest evidence yet of early humans building with wood.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0construction\u00a0is basic: a pair of overlapping logs, fitted together with a notch. It\u2019s nearly half a million years old and provides a rare look at how ancient human relatives were working with wood and changing their environments, authors wrote in a study published Wednesday in Nature.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took me a while before I appreciated what we were looking at,\u201d said study author Larry Barham, an archaeologist at the University of Liverpool. \u201cIt didn\u2019t look very nice, to be honest. But it is much more complex than I thought.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barham and his team dug up the log structure \u2013 plus a handful of wooden tools \u2013 from a riverbed site that sits above a waterfall in Zambia. They think the crossed logs could have been the base for a bigger structure like a walkway or a platform.<\/p>\n

Usually, wood rots quickly when it\u2019s exposed to the elements, which has left us with little evidence of how our ancient relatives used the material, Barham explained. But these materials were submerged in the river, which helped preserve them.<\/p>\n

So when his team uncovered the logs in 2019, they were still able to see telltale signs that early humans had shaped them \u2013 carving out a notch in the upper log, tapering off the ends and leaving tool marks across the surface.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything just looks so fresh, you think, \u2018It cannot be this old,\u2019\u201d Barham said.<\/p>\n

Figuring out just how old posed its own challenge, since traditional dating techniques couldn\u2019t get deep enough into the past. In this study, researchers used a new method called luminescence dating, which uses tiny minerals in the sand to estimate how long materials have been buried, explained study author Geoff Duller, an expert in dating methods at Aberystwyth University in Wales.<\/p>\n

The log structure was made at least 476,000 years ago, while the wood tools are slightly younger, under 400,000 years old. That places the materials in a time before our species, Homo sapiens, evolved.<\/p>\n

They would have been made by another kind of early human cousin \u2013 possibly Homo heidelbergensis, which was around in Africa at the time, authors said.<\/p>\n

If these ancient humans were putting effort into \u201cthe furniture of the site,\u201d it suggests they may have stayed for a while or made repeat visits _ not just roamed around as bands of hunter-gatherers, according to Dirk Leder, an archaeologist at Germany\u2019s Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage who was not involved with the research.<\/p>\n

And if \u201claying a couple of logs down doesn\u2019t sound that exciting,\u201d said Annemieke Milks, an archaeologist at the University of Reading who also was not involved in the study, consider this \u2013 it shows a different perspective from the usual stone tools that are often discovered.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an important window into what these humans were capable of,\u201d Milks said.<\/p>\n

\u00a92023 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n