Over 400,000 years ago, someone made this out of wood.....

[Toddy]

Over 400,000 years ago someone used stone tools to cut timbers to make them fit together.

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

Ancient timber preserved in a riverbed suggests humans were building wooden structures 500,000 years ago.

www.bbc.co.uk

Wood so rarely survives in the archaeological record, yet it is, with bone, among the most useful, the most widely used materials of construction, of tool use.

This pre-dates us. This pre-dates what we know of homo sapiens sapiens.

Looks like the clever hand-eye co-ordination type hominid has been around even longer than was believed

 

[FerlasDave]

Interesting article. But the sweeping statements about human history are something from the stone age themselves.

 

[Kadushu]

This is the story that seriously piqued my interest in paleoanthropology.

https://archaeology.co.uk/articles/the-ebbsfleet-elephant.htm

Relatively local to me and, as you say Toddy, a species predating 'humans' yet demonstrating craftmanship and teamwork to hunt megafauna. We can only guess at the language they may have had, never to be uttered again, and their culture now lost to the sands of time.

 

[demographic]

Interesting article. But the sweeping statements about human history are something from the stone age themselves.

What exact bit would you call the sweeping statements, I've scanned through it and it a seemed to be fairly solid.

 

[FerlasDave]

What exact bit would you call the sweeping statements, I've scanned through it and it a seemed to be fairly solid.

The fact that people are still under the impression that “Stone Age people” were nothing more than grumbling oafs that lived in caves and swung clubs about.

 

[Paul_B]

You talk of language lost to time it makes me wonder how many languages our species have lost within the boundaries of the British Isles. I once knew a guy who had a passion for Brythonic cultures and languages. Over the years I've read about old Brythonic languages and peoples. Like the peoples who left northern England due to more powerful groups moved into their areas. Eventually they migrated into Wales and even longer period of time their language became Welsh language, but the language of iirc the Omric peoples has been lost.

Then i believe there's an ancient script carved into wood and/or stone in Ireland that's not been deciphered but it's possible an early century language.

The above is vaguely remembered snippets of info I've read, seen on TV, heard on the radio or gleaned from conversations with ppl who have had long interests in such matters. Whatever the correct facts are, I have always had a kind of fantasy of being able to speak these ancient, possibly dead languages or read such scripts. Obviously with others who can do the same. To understand the development of languages through the world. I think it's more interesting than how they lived because communication iirc is what caused the development of hominid brains and intelligence.

As to new artifacts changing our scientific understanding of human development, I still like the dig sites that gave up neanderthal burials that showed they were so much closer to us. They had relationships, they, looked after their infirm/disabled family members and had burial rituals. A culture! It makes me think as a species homo sapiens had had a very exceptionalist view of ourselves that we're only just learning isn't justified. When a forest in the UK can develop resistance to a disease affecting its trees such that by the time the disease reached the other side the trees had developed resistance, when communication between trees have been studied. When under uk law many animals have been given extra protection as sentient beings. And so on. We're finally understanding, as a species, that we're not so special or of higher worth. Perhaps that's just rediscovering that.

Sorry for the long and rambling post!

 

[Wander]

Ramble away.
I like a good ramble.
Hold on...here comes another.
Jacques Lacan coined the phrase 'The Mirror Stage'. He used this to describe that moment in a child's development when it looked in a mirror and no longer saw another baby but saw itself. The mirror stage is that moment when the ego awakens and one becomes self-aware. Jean Piaget came up with that classic undergraduate linguistic discussion - what comes first - language or being? Piaget's thought was that language must come first because we need language to think/describe/share. Without language I have no way of talking about 'me' and my existence.
So discoveries like these pieces of wood become a mirror stage, become a discourse, that wakens us and help us see, think, and understand who and what we are and where we come from. It is a mirror stage.

 

[TLM]

The fact that people are still under the impression that “Stone Age people” were nothing more than grumbling oafs that lived in caves and swung clubs about.

Their surrounding probably but more evolutionary pressure on fast learning and "cleverness" than ours do, the same might go for physical fitness.

 

[gg012]

This is the story that seriously piqued my interest in paleoanthropology.

https://archaeology.co.uk/articles/the-ebbsfleet-elephant.htm

Relatively local to me and, as you say Toddy, a species predating 'humans' yet demonstrating craftmanship and teamwork to hunt megafauna. We can only guess at the language they may have had, never to be uttered again, and their culture now lost to the sands of time.

I hadn't heard of that find and it's not far from me either. That's a really interesting read, thanks for sharing.

Sent from underground

 

[TeeDee]

Over 400,000 years ago someone used stone tools to cut timbers to make them fit together.

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

Ancient timber preserved in a riverbed suggests humans were building wooden structures 500,000 years ago.

www.bbc.co.uk

Wood so rarely survives in the archaeological record, yet it is, with bone, among the most useful, the most widely used materials of construction, of tool use.

This pre-dates us. This pre-dates what we know of homo sapiens sapiens.

Looks like the clever hand-eye co-ordination type hominid has been around even longer than was believed

This reminds me of the following joke.

Tourist looking around Museum approaches Curator :- " Excuse me , how old is this Stone Axe Head? "

Curator :- " Hello , that piece? Its 400'008 years old "

Tourist " 400'008 !?!?! That's amazing !! How can you be so accurate with the aging process ?? "

Curator " Well, I know this for a fact as It was 400'000 years old when I started here and that was 8 years ago. "

 

[Pattree]

I wonder.
Does this piece of woodwork have anything at all to do with us?
Whoever crafted it wasn’t Homo sapiens. If their race/breed/species died out before passing the skill on to someone on our branch of the evolutionary tree then we can only applaud from the sidelines.

 

[Wander]

That's a good question. And I'd say, yes it does.
It has a lot to do with us whether or not our ancestors created it or not.
That's because it tells us a lot about how life on our little rock evolved and what species (any species) are capable of. And whilst our ancestors may not have done this it may raise questions of what our ancestors could have done and it may challenge our time lines and understanding.
But most of all it highlights our place on this planet and our relationship with all those we have, we do, and will, share our existence with.

 

[Kadushu]

I find it remarkable that we (Homo sapiens) didn't discover/invent tool making or garment making but rather descended from those who did. Interesting how technology progressed at a snail's pace for tens of millennia but if people were happy, fed, clothed and sheltered then maybe there wasn't a great drive for innovation, bearing in mind that some people continued stone tool use into the 20th century. If it ain't broke don't fix it. All continents except Antarctica were colonised during the stone age so there wasn't really a technological barrier to exploration and adaptation to completely alien biomes.

 

[Toddy]

I have two brothers. One's a Doctor, the other's a Joiner. I sent the link to the Primordial Joiner's work to my own one, and he's chuffed to bits

 

[Pattree]

Oh eventually our species discovered woodwork, that is apparent. Perhaps the wheel and many other things have been invented many times.

The rapid burst and pause development is seen everywhere in the human record. There is even a suggestion that this is true of evolution itself.

I remember when Banister broke the 4 minute mile. He held that record for just 46 days. Once we realise something can be done it promotes a burst of activity.

I’d love to know whether this ancient wood joint was cut to shape or an opportunistic fit into a naturally occurring hole.
Of course this doesn’t lessen the importance of the structure. Once established I can easily imagine the old ones seeking new ways to repeat the process.