Stone-age Hominids Invented Lincoln Logs

September 21, 2023 12:02 PM

Half-million-year-old wooden structure unearthed in Zambia

The abstract, from Nature: Evidence for the earliest structural use of wood at least 476,000 years ago

Wood artefacts rarely survive from the Early Stone Age since they require exceptional conditions for preservation; consequently, we have limited information about when and how hominins used this basic raw material. We report here on the earliest evidence for structural use of wood in the archaeological record. Waterlogged deposits at the archaeological site of Kalambo Falls, Zambia, dated by luminescence to at least 476 ± 23 kyr ago (ka), preserved two interlocking logs joined transversely by an intentionally cut notch. This construction has no known parallels in the African or Eurasian Palaeolithic. The earliest known wood artefact is a fragment of polished plank from the Acheulean site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel, more than 780 ka. Wooden tools for foraging and hunting appear 400 ka in Europe, China and possibly Africa. At Kalambo we also recovered four wood tools from 390 ka to 324 ka, including a wedge, digging stick, cut log and notched branch. The finds show an unexpected early diversity of forms and the capacity to shape tree trunks into large combined structures. These new data not only extend the age range of woodworking in Africa but expand our understanding of the technical cognition of early hominins, forcing re-examination of the use of trees in the history of technology.

posted by brundlefly (20 comments total)

TIL that yahoo still exists.

Joke aside, this is amazing, thanks for posting. I can read the Nature article at work, and will look forward to that.
posted by mumimor at 12:17 PM on September 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

TIL that yahoo still exists.

The half-million-year-old Zambian wooden structure probably had competent leadership.
posted by mhoye at 12:47 PM on September 21, 2023 [23 favorites]

Transported to the UK for analysis and preservation, the wooden artefacts are being stored in tanks that mimic the waterlogging that preserved them so beautifully for the last half-million years. But they will soon return to Zambia to be displayed.

DON'T DO IT!!! IT'S A TRAP!!! DON'T LET ANYONE BRITISH NEAR YOUR CULTURAL ARTIFACTS!!!
posted by slogger at 1:07 PM on September 21, 2023 [36 favorites]

This is neat, though I'm also more surprised by the survival of Yahoo than I am ancient logs.

More seriously, wood at least sometimes lasts this long; I think sometimes about how amazing it would be to be able see ancient fiber arts and leather-working, which virtually never survive.
posted by Dip Flash at 1:26 PM on September 21, 2023 [7 favorites]

Wood-age Hominids, surely.
posted by hippybear at 1:30 PM on September 21, 2023 [5 favorites]

That’s pretty amazing.

I watched one of the “Great Courses” series about engineering in the ancient world, and, while I focused mostly on Greece and Rome, it talked about the importance of using stone, wood, and sinew/leather to create tools that can maximize the physics — a stone head is good against compression and therefore will take an edge, a wooden handle multiplies force and is good against flexing (where stone would break), and leather/sinew can bind the two together effectively. So they”Stone Age” also being “the wood age” and “the leather age” makes sense.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:48 PM on September 21, 2023 [6 favorites]

The Tik Tok (science_is_real) I saw about this pointed out that the location is very picturesque, so if this is part of a Linkin Logs style cabin, it would have been a great place to live.
Around the same time the Homo Neaderthalis were hanging out in caves in Europe. Maybe there were less caves and more cabins in Africa due to necessity.
posted by asok at 2:21 PM on September 21, 2023

Eagerly awaiting the sure-to-come Stefan Milo video on this
posted by jason_steakums at 3:04 PM on September 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

I feel like we need a Brendan Frasier film where he's a prehistoric Forrest Gump, going across the world doing things like building this wood structure, blowing his hand print on a cave wall, etc other things that are prehistoric discoveries, and ending with him being frozen in ice and found as a mummy, not revived, in the modern times.

Yes, I know it would be ahistorical, but it could also be a quite fun movie.
posted by hippybear at 3:17 PM on September 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

Mod note: One deleted. This is not the place for insensitive jokes. Please consider the impact/contributions of your comments before making them.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 3:28 PM on September 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

More pieces in the continuing saga of "no, our ancestors were not stupid. they built the blocks on which we stand. (I have a huge hearty dislike of all the ancient aliens crap for being racist and colonist thinking wrapped in a scifi candy coating.)
posted by drewbage1847 at 3:38 PM on September 21, 2023 [17 favorites]

Love the headline on this. I read about the Zambia discovery a couple of days ago, and immediately thought, "Primitive Lincoln Logs!"
posted by abraxasaxarba at 3:46 PM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

Far be it from me, obviously, but...those "notches" are pretty smooth and organic-looking. How can they be sure they were made with tools by humans? Like, could they be logs that were washed away in a flood and rubbed against rocks? Or logs that were gnawed by animals, then the irregular surfaces weathered away by time?
posted by The Tensor at 3:59 PM on September 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

I feel like the lack of ancient wooden artifacts must have more to do with wood rotting than anything else. I mean, if you are making anything out of stone, I bet you’ve already made stuff out of wood. We find stone, bone, shell and ceramics because those things are more easily preserved.
posted by snofoam at 4:40 PM on September 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

How can they be sure they were made with tools by humans?

It’s possible the slots in the logs, bearing what appear to be stone tool marks, found next to stone tools, could have been cut by a series of improbable events. Maybe it was a guy named Ockham with a big razor and a time machine.
posted by zamboni at 5:07 PM on September 21, 2023 [13 favorites]

There's a pretty neat documentary on Netflix about Homo Naledi, called Unknown: Cave of Bones. It's about a cave where they buried their dead, the discovery of which revealed that they... buried their dead, and had mortuary practices, which were previously thought to be the exclusive province of homo sapiens. Homo naledi is mentioned in the article as one of the possible builders of the Lincoln Logs in question.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 5:09 PM on September 21, 2023 [9 favorites]

I imagine an archaeologist saying ‘you know, this looks like a brilliant project somebody never finished’ and a ghostly voice says ‘Yet. I haven’t finished it yet.’
posted by Phanx at 12:59 AM on September 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

The team who published the paper also have a video about it on YouTube.

It shows some of their testing to see how to recreate the tool marks to compare, and also shows the pieces in more detail. (There's also a cameo by a mate of mine, JR, who was doing the 3D scanning of it back here in Liverpool!)
posted by amcewen at 4:25 AM on September 22, 2023 [7 favorites]

I can't get enough of these glimpses into our deep pre-history. Surprisingly sophisticated for so long ago.
posted by neonamber at 6:14 AM on September 22, 2023

I am gobsmacked by a locale that was waterlogged so continuously so long!

Plus everything else.
posted by clew at 7:49 AM on September 22, 2023 [1 favorite]