430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by nashashmi » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 8:54 PM UTC

barbacoa wrote: post #128

melenaboija wrote: post #114

Ok, since I moved to the US from Europe a few years ago my perception of wood has changed a lot, especially for construction. Seeing this reinforces my view. Wood lasts for fucking ever under the proper conditions. Old construction in Europe often only had the beams made of wood, and I always thought that was orders of magnitude more durable than wooden houses, like thousands of years vs decades. I don’t think that’s…

>concrete and cement production are quite bad. Modern concrete construction uses iron rebar liberally. That means every concrete structure built today will crack and crumble in a few hundred years at most, as the iron absorbs oxygen, it swells from the rust. Which is a shame, roman concrete buildings without rebar will still be standing 1000s of years from now.

How about petrified wood? Would that also crack and crumble in the long run?

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

#152

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 9:01 PM UTC

Sharlin wrote: post #109

wil421 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put it into perspective, we did not invent fire.

Well, nobody did, because fire was likely used for tens or hundreds of thousands of years before anyone figured out how to make fire on demand.

Use of fire considerably pre-dates H. sapiens, with anthropological evidence dating to 1.7 -- 2 million years ago. Sapiens diverged from common ancestors about 600,000 years ago.

"We" (Homo sapiens) did not invent fire. Our predecessor species were already using it.

Firestarting is harder to pin down and may be within the scope of homo evolution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_human...>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human#Evolution>

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

#153

Post by emeril » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 9:06 PM UTC

maybe the trump administration can learn something from these tools to offset the 10k STEM PhDs that have resigned and moved onto to greener pastures...

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

#154

Post by llmslave » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 9:07 PM UTC

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!

The big secret: certain pools of ancient humans have been smart for alot longer than modern evolutionary theory wants to admit

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

#155

Post by keybored » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 9:08 PM UTC

MarcelOlsz wrote: post #72

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tools predate homo sapiens (which emerged about 300 kYA) I’m going to use a charged word because Jane Goodall used it. Goodall asserted that humans and chimpanzees (and wolves) are unique among animals in that we have a genocidal tendency [1]. When a group attacks us (or has “land and resources” we want) we don’t just chase them off. We exterminate them. We expend great resources to track them down to ensure they c…

The worst part of reading this thread is I know I won't be able to google image anything interesting related to "non-human hominids" :( Your comment was oddly depressing lol. Real "are we the baddies?" moment this morning.

Of course we are the baddies. That’s the narrative every time people need to defend terrible behavior lead by sociopaths: but that’s just human nature. Very practical fallback.

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

#156

Post by sethammons » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 9:17 PM UTC

drakythe wrote: post #16

throwup238 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Firehawks spread fire to scare out game; that count?

https://wildlife.org/australian-firehawks-use-fire-to-catch-...

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

#157

Post by adgjlsfhk1 » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 9:33 PM UTC

llmslave wrote: post #154

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!

The big secret: certain pools of ancient humans have been smart for alot longer than modern evolutionary theory wants to admit

This isn't a problem for evolutionary theory. It's literally a necessary prediction of it. Most recent common ancestor of humans and chimps is 5-10 million years ago. Since we have observed tool usage in modern chimps and lots of very complicated tool use in humans, the necessary prediction is that some amount of tool use goes back at least ~5-10 million years, with increased complexity roughly tracking with the continuous increase in braincase size.

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

#158

Post by alecbz » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 9:34 PM UTC

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…

> Even this evidence of woodworking is largely unremarkable .... this find is most notable for its preservation.

This somewhat contradicts the subheading, no?

> The finding, along with the discovery of a 500,000-year-old hammer made of bone, indicates that our human ancestors were making tools even earlier than archaeologists thought.

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

#159

Post by tim333 » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 9:35 PM UTC

shay_ker wrote: post #122

The thing I’m continually surprised by is the usage of obsidian by nearly every ancient-ish civilization. The usage of bow & arrow predates farming, insane.

I guess that before metal working, obsidian would have been the best knife edge available.

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

#160

Post by eru » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 9:43 PM UTC

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #145

OJFord wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The submission's subheading seems to imply that there was a gap where homo* emerged but weren't using tools then though? I can't read the article or copy-paste it due to pay wall, but it says something along the lines of the find suggesting our human ancestors were using tools longer ago than we thought.

Way back when I was in high school doing history (Money for Nothing was on heavy rotation on the radio and Bob from Stranger Things was still Mikey from the Goonies), our teacher explained that there was evidence of stone tools being used by early hominids, then nothing much except maybe fragments of rock that may have been used as hammers or axe heads, and then into an era where simple bronze tools emerged. What arc…

> And she told us that would likely happen again, there would be a gap where our technology proved to be insufficiently durable to last throughout history. Unsurprisingly not everyone in the class thought this was likely, but I figured it was possible.

I heard that fear being muttered mostly about everything going digital and that's much harder for archaeologists to dig up than paper or stone tablets.

However, that's all nonsense, of course: the stuff that people bother to write down is seldom all that interesting. Who cares about who was king or whatever? The real juicy bits are all in our garbage dumps, and we are producing garbage that'll last much longer than anything the ancients could muster. What with all our metal, glass, plastic etc.