Archaeologists discover 500,000-year-old ‘never seen before’ timber buildings in Zambia.
Archaeologists discovered 500,000-year-old timber constructions in Zambia. These ‘never seen before’ structures are the earliest indications of the use of wooden tools.
Archaeologists discovered 500,000-year-old timber constructions in Zambia. The archaeologists stated in a paper published on Wednesday in the Nature Journal that these structures and artifacts were discovered at the Kalambo Falls in Zambia and date back over 476,000 years.
According to the investigators, the discoveries have “no known parallels.” They stated that the revelation of these findings alters our perspective of what humans were capable of in the early days.
Larry Barham, the principal researcher and a professor at the University of Liverpool, told the BBC on Wednesday, “They used their intelligence, imagination, and skills to create something they’d never seen before, something that had never previously existed.”
These structures may have been erected by early humans to help them get off the squishy ground. They show early humans using wooden tools like digging sticks and building platforms and structures out of enormous tree trunks.
The scientists noted in the article that they employed luminescence dating–a technique that involves measuring the quantity of radiation absorbed by rocks over millennia–to calculate the age of their discoveries.
Wet circumstances near Kalambo Falls contributed to the unique discovery because wooden items normally expire unless kept in extraordinary situations such as waterlogged places.
According to research co-author and University of Aberystwyth professor Geoff Duller, these structures predate the earliest Homo sapiens fossils.
This has caused confusion among scholars as to which ancient human species was responsible for these discoveries.
The first finding of these wooden buildings was made in 2019.
Archaeological finds like these provide us with insight into the earlier world of ancient humans and their skills, as well as the places where they came up with the concepts for such structures and technologies to make life easier in historic times.
Last year was a year of celebration for archaeological discoveries, including the discovery of the earliest known human amputation and the discovery of a forgotten city in Iraq.
