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

#211

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 2:27 AM UTC

danans wrote: post #209

WalterBright wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through public elementary and high school. The amount of world history taught there is vanishingly small. Just for fun, ask some high schoolers who were the major combatants in WW2.

> The amount of world history taught there is vanishingly small. Just for fun, ask some high schoolers who were the major combatants in WW2. That is an example of poor teaching of historical facts. It's bad (especially in our current times when people have forgotten the perils of fascism), but it's different than what the GP describes, which sounds like the biblical literalist timeline of life on Earth (with creation…

I've also seen "history" taught in high school that the middle class only emerged after FDR.

(The middle class thrived in colonial America.)

Freshman physics in college blew through 2 years of high school honors physics in a week.

What's taught in public schools is pretty thin gruel. That said, I enjoyed school, as all my friends were there and we had a good time.

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

#212

Post by jjk166 » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 2:33 AM UTC

3RTB297 wrote: post #48

lmf4lol wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do you think would this info be surpressed?

I'm not the person you asked this of, but I've worked in museums and research settings and can lob a response your way. Ultimately, it's that scientists are humans, too. Despite some of them really making their research data-forward, things like tenure, career, funding, and even who would publish your work now and in the future all create normal human environments that reward small, incremental changes to a body of k…

> Both warm-blooded dinosaurs and the Chicxulub impact were both theories dismissed as fringe for decades before overwhelming evidence led to them being accepted as likely. In no small way thanks to Jurassic Park.

The main rejection of the impact hypothesis was that the dinosaurs had already died off by the time of the impact, the idea that the iridium in the layer came from an impact was reasonably well received. In 1984 a survey found 62% of paleontologists accepted the impact occurred, but only 24% believed it caused the extinction. The Alvarez duo, who proposed the impact hypothesis, were proposing to redefine where the cretaceous ended based on a new dating method (at the time the end of the cretaceous was believed to be a layer of coal a few meters off from the now accepted boundary), and fossil evidence at the time seemed to show gradual decline. A big part of the acceptance of the theory was the development of new analysis methods that showed the evidence for a gradual extinction prior to the impact to be illusory. By the time the impact crater was identified, it was already the dominant theory. Actually in the early 90s major journals were accused of being unfairly biased in favor of the impact hypothesis, with many more papers published in favor than against.

Completely coincidentally, the theory that the chixulub structure was an impact crater was initially rejected and it wasn't until 1990 that cores sampled from the site proved it was.

Dinosaurs being warm blooded was well accepted by the late 70s.

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

#213

Post by adgjlsfhk1 » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 2:33 AM UTC

foxglacier wrote: post #165

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Being in a common ancestor is certainly compatible with evolution but it's not necessary because it could have evolved independently in each branch.

if it were only 2 primates that's a plausible explanation, but when it's pretty much every simean using tools, and all the old world apes making tools, it's pretty hard to argue for convergent evolution rather than a trait that exists ancestrally.

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

#214

Post by joquarky » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 2:55 AM UTC

api wrote: post #176

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…

Sometimes when I think about this it makes me wonder if we should take the dark forest hypothesis seriously (re: Fermi paradox). Not only are we the only species to reach this kind of technology but among humans the first group to reach space was the Nazis. Today the innovation in that area seems driven by militaristic states and by people who seem ideologically adjacent. In other words it’s driven by very aggressive…

But why would a species that built an Apache helicopter want to waste its resources on attacking a termite mound?

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

#215

Post by tehjoker » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 2:59 AM 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…

My understanding is the UK exhausted most of its old forests in the quest to smelt enough metal for a navy. Smelting is incredibly energy intensive...

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

#216

Post by throwup238 » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 3:13 AM UTC

Incipient wrote: post #169

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…

>going to use a charged word I honestly have no clue what word you used was 'charged'. Considering any of those words charged makes me worry how far political correctness has gone! (I'm assuming, I suppose, politically charged?)

“Genocidal” is charged because it projects human morality onto non-human animals. It’s about basic scientific hygiene, not political correctness.

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

#217

Post by 3eb7988a1663 » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 3:28 AM UTC

KaseKun wrote: post #171

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.

Not really that insane, hunting is a much faster reward cycle than farming. On the surface, it makes sense that tools for hunting are produced earlier than tools for farming

Ancient crops were also pathetic to a modern eye. Before thousands of years of selective breeding, corn had six or seven kernels on a cob. Doubtful that it would be possible to survive on a field of wild cultivars without at least a few generations pushing towards more productive specimens.

https://evolution.earthathome.org/grasses/andropogoneae/maiz...

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

#218

Post by vee-kay » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 3:54 AM UTC

Article title is click bait.

Hominin tools that are millions of years old have already been found by archeologists.

e.g., recent news: Scientists uncover 3-million-year-old tools but they weren’t made by our ancestors: https://www.futura-sciences.com/en/scientists-uncover-3-mill...

A list of findings of earliest known hominin tools: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earliest_tools

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

#219

Post by bandrami » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 4:13 AM UTC

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #14

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…

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?

Just to throw this distinction out there, what makes something a "tool" isn't that it is used but that it is fashioned. Plenty of animals use things to accomplish tasks; the processing of materials to fashion tools is much more rare.

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

#220

Post by danans » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 5:38 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #211

danans wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The amount of world history taught there is vanishingly small. Just for fun, ask some high schoolers who were the major combatants in WW2. That is an example of poor teaching of historical facts. It's bad (especially in our current times when people have forgotten the perils of fascism), but it's different than what the GP describes, which sounds like the biblical literalist timeline of life on Earth (with creation…

I've also seen "history" taught in high school that the middle class only emerged after FDR. (The middle class thrived in colonial America.) Freshman physics in college blew through 2 years of high school honors physics in a week. What's taught in public schools is pretty thin gruel. That said, I enjoyed school, as all my friends were there and we had a good time.

> What's taught in public schools is pretty thin gruel.

It's pretty thin gruel at many private schools too. The limiting factor in either case is that most kids are there because they are made to go, not self directed. Money does not buy motivation, but it buys access.