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Archaeologists discover oldest wooden structure

news.liverpool.ac.uk

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Re: Archaeologists discover oldest wooden structure

#81

Post by asdff »

jstanley wrote: post #75
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t know that it’s purely compulsion, do we? Perhaps they know that still pools of water are best for survival so they’re motivated to prevent water from running away. The level of compulsion could be more sophisticated than we imagine. This seems to be true with many mammals. Not long ago in North America, it wasn’t uncommon to think of dogs as meat-headed automatons. Today it’s common to recognize that they ha…

Beavers lack the social mechanisms to transmit knowledge across time and space. So either they are all independently inventing exactly the same solution to the problem... or it's some sort of instinctual compulsion.

We have similar compulsions too. Humans have an instinct to seek shelter, for example. You might say "well thats because we are taught this etc etc" but at the same time, all great apes shelter, our hominid ancestors sheltered, we shelter today, there is clearly an instinct to shelter even if we have these conscious thoughts around it. I bet if you had a perfectly feral human and had them in a clearing in a rain storm, they would try and find some shelter from it in the forest without being taught any wilderness survival basics.

Re: Archaeologists discover oldest wooden structure

#82

Post by defrost »

1letterunixname wrote: post #70
Archelaos wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That the "Stone Age" should better be called the "Wood Age" is an adage that has been used so often over the years that it has lost its appeal for me. Here, for example, is a summary of a paper from 1985 that argues this case: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/016093...

Agriculture seems a prerequisite for most other technologies because you can't invent much if you're constantly following 4 legged food. The transition to ag (small-scale gardening) began before 21k BCE (23k years ago) predating Natufian culture.

> if you're constantly following 4 legged food.

This is such a weirdly persistent bizzaro notion of hunter-gather lifestyles.

I grew up in the Kimberley region surrounded by and outnumbered by traditional hunter gathers ( some sea | some river | and we'd move south and interact with some of desert folk ) who had their food for the day in hand in under six hours, easily.

It makes more sense to think of Hunter-gathers as quasi nomadic across an estate that reaches to the horizon and beyond filled with animals they watch and both eat and protect, along with edible plants they harvest and encourage (by churning up soil and throwing seeds and husks back into).

The days are filled with story telling and walking a circuit looking for fresh tracks, hacking a few thick plants, digging out roots, sifting low tide mud for molluscs, pinging a few lizards in the head with rocks from a basketball court distance away, etc.

Hunter-Gatherers do practice agriculture, it just doesn't look like western european agriculture, more like ripping out 'bad' plants and spreading the seeds of good plants.

There's plenty of free time.

Re: Archaeologists discover oldest wooden structure

#83

Post by abathur »

DabbyDabberson wrote: post #40

Woah, every new discovery really makes Graham Hancock seem a bit less crazy. 476,000 years is a HUGE jump. They called him crazy for thinking that the Egyptians had structures 12,000 years ago.

It should be evident that, with effort, the date of all firsts (and lasts) will continue to approach (but probably never reach) the date of The Oldest (or Newest) Artifact We Can Plausibly Find.

It doesn't take genius, intellectual courage, or prescience to expect this to continue.

There's certainly room for theorizing about what we may find and where, but archaeologists should in some fundamental way be more limited by proof than their imaginations.

Aside: I'd love to see the citation for "They called him crazy for thinking that the Egyptians had structures 12,000 years ago", as I'm a bit flummoxed by who's stupid enough to get any further out over their skis than "we don't have any evidence for that."

Re: Archaeologists discover oldest wooden structure

#84

Post by pixelfarmer »

satvikpendem wrote: post #26
diogenes4 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do they know the wood was used 476,000 years ago, as opposed to a human 6000 years ago finding and using some 470,000 year old wood? Seems absurdly unlikely—is there a reason to suspect this is the case? Even if you were to find half-a-million-year-old wood why would you use it to build a structure?

I mean, we use rocks that are millions of years old in our own structures, why wouldn't it be likely that an early human saw some wood and thought that it'd be a strong building material without knowing or considering the age of that wood, or something to that effect?

Just that wood is organic material and suffers faster degradation vs. rocks when exposed to weather, which is implied in "if you can just find it". Mind you, they were digging up material in the old times already to find the best stuff for making their tools, but they were for sure not looking for old wood in that manner.

Plus, well preserved old wood is much harder than its fresh counterparts (better tooling / more time for processing required) and a rare find on top of that, so unlikely to be used for standard utility structures.

Re: Archaeologists discover oldest wooden structure

#85

Post by yieldcrv »

We’ve had 8,000 relatively continuous relatively good years for humankind’s continuity and civilization advancement. Within that, in some regions there were societies far more advanced than others, before falling and causing complete disruptions on that happening again for another thousand years

Within 496,000 years, there are 61 other 8,000 year time periods

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, on this topic

Re: Archaeologists discover oldest wooden structure

#86

Post by pixelfarmer »

foota wrote: post #8

How amazing would it be to discover that an ancient civilization existed with a technology level on par with the iron age or so? I guess if we were finding dinosaurs though the odds we wouldn't have found anything from that time are maybe slim.

The Bronze Age. I think the best entry for that is via the "Late Bronze Age collapse" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse), which gives you an indication of how networked things were back then already. That includes trade of amber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Road

Re: Archaeologists discover oldest wooden structure

#87

Post by SomewhatLikely »

jl6 wrote: post #4

How do they know the wood was used 476,000 years ago, as opposed to a human 6000 years ago finding and using some 470,000 year old wood? This gives a hint: > They used new luminescence dating techniques, which reveal the last time minerals in the sand surrounding the finds were exposed to sunlight, to determine their age. ... but it seems like there might be other explanations for that sand being there?

I was wondering instead what their dating method would do with old sand that had been dug up and quickly buried during the construction. Does a very short exposure to sun reset the mineral signature they are looking at? If not, then the structure could be much newer then the last time the sand spent an extended time in the sun. In fact, if the sand digging and moving happened in the evening to avoid the heat of the sun then the sand may have been dug up and used while never being exposed to the sun.

Re: Archaeologists discover oldest wooden structure

#88

Post by mistercheph »

jstanley wrote: post #75
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t know that it’s purely compulsion, do we? Perhaps they know that still pools of water are best for survival so they’re motivated to prevent water from running away. The level of compulsion could be more sophisticated than we imagine. This seems to be true with many mammals. Not long ago in North America, it wasn’t uncommon to think of dogs as meat-headed automatons. Today it’s common to recognize that they ha…

Beavers lack the social mechanisms to transmit knowledge across time and space. So either they are all independently inventing exactly the same solution to the problem... or it's some sort of instinctual compulsion.

This is the reasoning model for modern empiricists:

1. Make a baseless a-priori claim that mistakes what we have evidence of to be the bounded set of what is: 'We have not discovered any social mechanisms in beavers to transmit knowledge across time and space' is transfigurated into 'No social mechanisms exist in beavers to transmit knowledge'

Similarly, having not yet discovered a single reason for my wife to be upset with me, I must recognize that she doesn't have any.

2. Invent a false dichotomy, with one option being totally absurd, the other being your pet theory.

3. Settle on your preconceived notion.

Is it ever possible to transmit knowledge, or anything for that matter not across time and space?

Re: Archaeologists discover oldest wooden structure

#89

Post by Stevvo »

DabbyDabberson wrote: post #40

Woah, every new discovery really makes Graham Hancock seem a bit less crazy. 476,000 years is a HUGE jump. They called him crazy for thinking that the Egyptians had structures 12,000 years ago.

One thing Hancock is undeniably right about; "Stuff keeps getting older"

Re: Archaeologists discover oldest wooden structure

#90

Post by ClassyJacket »

rhelz wrote: post #30

What struck me is that the two pieces of wood were found notched together at a 90-degree angle. This has got to be the first-known 90-degree angle in history. Virtually nothing in nature has a 90-degree angle. This is an invention of the highest order. EDIT: thanks for all the good responses; I should have written a bit more carefully--I meant to say that this might be the first-known time a 90-degree angle was delib…

Bismuth!
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