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

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 9:43 PM UTC

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #121

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…

It's not totally a "decision" on the part of the Americans to use a lot of wood in construction. It's just that America has tons of space, including space useful for growing Douglas Fir and Southern Yellow Pine, which then can be turned in to 2x4s and other construction lumber. Most of Europe long ago exhausted easily accessible natural forest resources, and where it's not densely populated tends to prefer using land…

Post by foxglacier » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 9:53 PM UTC

mmooss wrote: post #129

layer8 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about tool manufacture here, however, not just about tool use.

The people of the Olduvan industry from 2.58 mya tools (the earliest accepted by consensus [0]) manufactured their tools - that's exactly what archaeologists are talking about. Chimps and New Caledonian Crows (and maybe some other animals) also manufacture their tools, at least sometimes, BTW. IIRC the crows strip sticks and bend them into hooks to grab at objects. Why would someone imply otherwise if they don't know…

Post by foxglacier » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 9:56 PM UTC

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #157

llmslave wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cont…

Post by caymanjim » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 10:14 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!

Post by Incipient » Tue, Jan 27, 2026, 10:27 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #69

throwup238 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…