430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found
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Re: 430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found
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Website appears to be down from too much traffic
Re: 430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found
#3[stub for offtopicness]
Website appears to be down from too much traffic
Re: 430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found
#4Re: 430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found
#5430,000 years? Am I reading this headline correctly? (since the site seems to have fallen victim to the HN-hug-of-death). That seems wildly further back than I understood humans to have tools, or even homo sapiens to have existed.
ETA: Today I learned I had a much much larger gap in knowledge than I thought I did. Thanks to everyone for the information and links!
Re: 430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found
#6430,000 years? Am I reading this headline correctly? (since the site seems to have fallen victim to the HN-hug-of-death). That seems wildly further back than I understood humans to have tools, or even homo sapiens to have existed. ETA: Today I learned I had a much much larger gap in knowledge than I thought I did. Thanks to everyone for the information and links!
It wasn’t Homo sapiens most likely. We have found stone tools made by Erectus.
Re: 430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found
#7430,000 years? Am I reading this headline correctly? (since the site seems to have fallen victim to the HN-hug-of-death). That seems wildly further back than I understood humans to have tools, or even homo sapiens to have existed. ETA: Today I learned I had a much much larger gap in knowledge than I thought I did. Thanks to everyone for the information and links!
Yes it's definitely further back than homo sapiens have existed (200k - 300k years), but our ancestor species were known to have used tools and control fire. I believe we have evidence of tool use going back 1 million years. So this article is referencing the oldest known _wooden_ tools, which are obviously much less likely to be preserved across the ages.
Re: 430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found
#8430,000 years? Am I reading this headline correctly? (since the site seems to have fallen victim to the HN-hug-of-death). That seems wildly further back than I understood humans to have tools, or even homo sapiens to have existed. ETA: Today I learned I had a much much larger gap in knowledge than I thought I did. Thanks to everyone for the information and links!
Tools predate homo sapiens (which emerged about 300 kYA) by millions of years. The first stone industry - Oldowan - is at least two million years old and might be as old as three million. They predate what we call “archaic humans” by a long time.
Even this evidence of woodworking is largely unremarkable. We’ve got phytolith [1] and microwear [2] studies showing unambiguous evidence of woodworking going back at least 1.5 million years. Wood tools just don’t survive very long, so this find is most notable for its preservation.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
Re: 430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found
#9430,000 years? Am I reading this headline correctly? (since the site seems to have fallen victim to the HN-hug-of-death). That seems wildly further back than I understood humans to have tools, or even homo sapiens to have existed. ETA: Today I learned I had a much much larger gap in knowledge than I thought I did. Thanks to everyone for the information and links!
We have evidence that non Homo sapiens bipeds (e.g., Neanderthals, Homo habilis) used tools far before we came onto the scene. A long lineage of hominin species came before humans!