Excavators discovered a part of a construction shaped by two overlapping logs. Barham et al. Nature (2023), Writer supplied
To most individuals, complicated applied sciences separate fashionable people from their ancestors who lived within the Stone Age, 1000’s or a whole lot of 1000’s of years in the past. In right this moment’s quick altering world, older applied sciences, even these from a couple of years in the past, are sometimes described dismissively as “Stone Age”.
Such phrases serve to disconnect us from our historical relations, who have been rather more refined than we generally suppose they have been.
A group led by archaeologist Larry Barham on the College of Liverpool not too long ago printed strong and nicely dated proof for the earliest identified use of wooden expertise. The picket construction, together with artefacts, date to 476,000 years in the past and have been excavated from waterlogged deposits at Kalambo Falls, Zambia.
This archaeological website is legendary for producing traces of human cultural improvement courting to a whole lot of 1000’s of years in the past.
The remarkably nicely preserved proof discovered by Barham and colleagues embrace, amongst different issues, a wedge (a kind of picket device), a digging stick, a log lower with the assistance of instruments and a department with a notch lower into it.
However why, within the age of AI and robotics, ought to wooden expertise from practically half one million years in the past generate a lot curiosity from each scientists and the general public?
The proof from Kalambo Falls demonstrates a exceptional potential by early hominins (historical human relations) to supply wooden and form it with instruments.
They have been capable of produce, not solely an assortment of different instruments, but in addition refined picket constructions. We don’t know precisely what species made the construction, however Homo heidelbergensis or a species much like Homo naledi could be candidates, amongst others.
These outcomes have far reaching implications for our understanding of how sustainable supplies have been used within the Early Stone Age. It additionally sheds mild on the capabilities of early hominins.
From hypothesis to truth
Archaeology is the research of deep and up to date historical past utilizing the stays of issues left by individuals who got here earlier than us. Nonetheless, these histories are biased in favour of issues which have both survived the passage of time or decayed however left traces.
People lived within the period often known as the Stone Age for practically 99% of human historical past. The Early Stone Age is taken into account the earliest and maybe longest “technological age”, stretching from practically 4 million years in the past to 300,000 years in the past.
We all know extra about stone instruments throughout this early section of human improvement, partially as a result of inorganic supplies equivalent to rocks are practically indestructible in comparison with these made from perishable supplies like wooden.
Certainly, wooden could be very scarce in deposits belonging to the Early Stone Age, requiring distinctive circumstances of preservation to keep away from decaying. It survives solely in extraordinarily dry environments equivalent to deserts, or extraordinarily moist circumstances – as was the case at Kalambo Falls.
Given the shortage of proof, direct proof of the intentional use of wooden from greater than 400,000 years in the past sharply transforms our understanding of the antiquity of wooden as a expertise – and the way lengthy hominins have been interacting with this versatile materials. They used it to make instruments, to construct shelters, to acquire meals and maybe even for gas as they went about their each day lives.
Though researchers had suspected that wooden expertise was extensively utilized by early hominins, with out exhausting, direct proof, we couldn’t settle for that as truth. Archaeology is a discovery and evidence-based discipline of research –- seeing is believing. The Kalambo Falls discovery reworked hypothesis into truth, altering our understanding of the historical past of expertise.
Benefiting the setting
Nonetheless, a part of the problem comes from ideas of human historical past which might be described as progressivist or linear – that envisage historical past as an inevitable advance in direction of modernity by scientific and technological achievement.
Previously, some scientists thought of the minds of early hominins to have been extra restricted in comparison with these of contemporary people. They believed expertise and tradition improved in sophistication as human mind measurement elevated, shifting from a “easy” state to the complicated, algorithm-dominated world we stay in right this moment.
Although mind sizes have elevated over time, and that expertise has modified, it’s potential that those that got here earlier than us had a powerful understanding of the supplies round them and cared for his or her environment.
The intentionally-shaped wooden development from Kalambo Falls is an illustration of design, expertise and creativity – utilizing what in right this moment’s world we might name a inexperienced expertise.
Notions of “progress” are fairly deeply embedded in tradition. This will also be a proxy for the exceptionalism of contemporary people (Homo sapiens) – the assumption that there’s something distinctive or exemplary about our species in contrast with earlier hominins. If we put these notions apart, we are able to recognise that so known as “backward applied sciences” can tremendously profit the setting and the planet.
The truth that wooden is perishable makes it a extra sustainable materials, in contrast to some fashionable development supplies which are practically indestructible, and depart conspicuous ruins. Manufacturing these fashionable supplies additionally emits greenhouse gases that contribute to local weather change.
After all, there are dangers related to utilizing wooden as a development materials, equivalent to hearth and decay. However in applicable conditions, we should always proceed our lengthy custom of constructing in wooden. Maybe the ancients weren’t so backward, however extra progressive than us when it got here to taking care of the planet by sound determination making.
In abstract, the Kalambo Falls proof means that, no less than generally, early hominins have been capable of make the most of supplies aside from stone for his or her on a regular basis wants, together with tool-making and shelter. They may even have been in a position to make use of the sources of their setting for gas and drugs.
Nonetheless, we’d like extra direct proof, going again to the beginnings of the Stone Age to display how those that got here earlier than us used and labored with wooden. Extra discoveries like this would possibly even lead us to rename the mighty Stone Age because the Wooden Age.
Shadreck Chirikure receives funding from the British Academy, the College of Oxford, Nationwide Analysis Basis of South Africa, and the College of Cape City.
