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430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found

nytimes.com

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Re: 430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found

#11

Post by throwup238 »

doctoboggan wrote: post #7
drakythe wrote: post #5

430,000 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.

We have evidence of control over fire (but not fire starting) at about 1 million years. Stone tools go even further back, at least 2 million years.

Re: 430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found

#12

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

doctoboggan wrote: post #7
drakythe wrote: post #5

430,000 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.

We have 3.3 million year old stone tools https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14464. They're very simple (even more so than the Oldowan stone tools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan) and basically just look like rocks, but there is clear evidence of intentional shaping by hominins (somewhere in the fuzzy late Australopthis/early homo transition).

Re: 430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found

#13

Post by drakythe »

throwup238 wrote: post #8
drakythe wrote: post #5

430,000 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…

Well, today I learned something! Thanks for the information, I guess I know which rabbit hole I'm going down today.

Re: 430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found

#14

Post by thinkingtoilet »

throwup238 wrote: post #8
drakythe wrote: post #5

430,000 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…

That's wild! Thanks for sharing. I didn't realize these things went so far back. So are you saying these were straight up non-human primates using tools? Or is this all traceable to our lineage?

Re: 430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found

#16

Post by drakythe »

throwup238 wrote: post #11
doctoboggan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We have evidence of control over fire (but not fire starting) at about 1 million years. Stone tools go even further back, at least 2 million years.

Wait hang on, would they "control" file by finding natural sources (volcano, lightning strike wildfire, etc.) and then make use of that source for controlled sources of light/heat/etc? I guess I've always thought of "control" of fire including the intentional starting thereof.

Re: 430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found

#18

Post by an0malous »

There is archaeological evidence of tools going back even further, potentially over a million years, but it's ignored for the usual reasons of dogma and not conveniently fitting into the paradigm of the current priestly class. I'd highly recommend this talk Michael Cremo (author of "Forbidden Archaeology") gave for this "Authors at Google" program in 2014:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKfGC3P9KoQ

Re: 430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found

#19

Post by lmf4lol »

an0malous wrote: post #18

There is archaeological evidence of tools going back even further, potentially over a million years, but it's ignored for the usual reasons of dogma and not conveniently fitting into the paradigm of the current priestly class. I'd highly recommend this talk Michael Cremo (author of "Forbidden Archaeology") gave for this "Authors at Google" program in 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKfGC3P9KoQ

why do you think would this info be surpressed?

Re: 430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found

#20

Post by drakythe »

jolt42 wrote: post #10
itsamario wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God made things earlier than previously thought. Ha

Finding red blood cells in 70 million year old bones. Still find that incomprehensible. Not sure King George didn't kill a dinosaur.

For anyone else absolutely baffled by this statement: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/09/75-million-y...

Red blood cells, and collagen from dinosaur bones. With the idea that even current museum hosted bones might have more??? Today is a wild day for me.

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