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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

#261

Post by withinboredom »

unfitted2545 wrote: post #177
ncr100 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a mind bender, yes. Your argument, written here and As far as I understand it at the moment, goes along with the other argument that everything is a simulation, or that everything that we do is preordained based upon physics. All mindbenders. I want to believe that I have the ability to make an educated decision when faced e.g. with impulses to suppress or oppress others, I do know that I can consider ramificat…

I do believe in determinism. I see what you mean by being able to consider the worth of harming something for your own gain. But doesn't this apply to all animals? If a bear was hungry I'm sure they would happily eat you, but they would probably think twice if they weren't. Same for early humans, it's just we have our technologies (which our intellectual nature has enabled) now to prop us up and not have to really th…

If you hop off the modern treadmill ... you'll very quickly be thinking about survival. I once ate a salad off the ground, I was so hungry. It only takes a few days and we regress to degenerate animals.

I'm pretty sure governments know this and want to prevent it at all costs beyond a certain point.

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

#262

Post by saalweachter »

WalterBright wrote: post #190
shakna wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have no evidence of warfare between the species. Thats not correct. We have a neanderthal slain by spear, at a time and place where it was only carried by modern humans. [0] This isn't a singular event. We have a history on injuries consistent with war, on both sides. Yes, we "sheboinked". We also took women as prizes of war and raped them. As humanity has continued to do for most of their history. Sure, the sto…

> As humanity has continued to do for most of their history. All of their history.

Also, "our". "Our" history.

Assuming we still aren't letting bots post their own opinions here.

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

#263

Post by kylestanfield »

nandomrumber wrote: post #233
wil421 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and everyone else know exactly what I meant but whatever. Not sure why I train AI on this site anymore.

How can I be certain I know what you mean. Ever since Earth’s atmosphere had sufficient oxygen to sustain fire given a fuel source and heat, fire has exists. If we can lay the blame on anyone for having started fire it’s going to be whoever fine tuned the constants such that there is anything here at all.

Bazinga!

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

#265

Post by riazrizvi »

HocusLocus wrote: post #52

I have always believed that the human evolution consensus which is usually based upon finds of advanced toolmaking in absence of culture cues, to be questionable by orders of magnitude. So it seemed natural to simply double generational concepts of the village along a trade route, from ~500kya (like the Nile) to 1 million YA as a hyperstable span of evolution of the 'trade route village'. I even wrote a book about it…

That's how these evolutionary scientists do read it - 'the race to find the evidence to backup our concepts of intelligent hominid behavior has achieved another breakthrough'. The journalists frame it as 'scientists are shocked again' to get more views/engagement. No doubt some 'scientists', being people, probably get taken in by the journalists framing too.

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

#267

Post by pilaf »

vee-kay wrote: post #218

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

Perhaps the key word is "wooden"? Which is not to say much older wooden tools didn't exist, but it's likely extremely rare that they would be preserved this long.

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

#268

Post by htek »

WalterBright wrote: post #256
htek wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Musk driving space technology forward, and I don't see him acting militaristic. Surely, you jest. He's heavily entwined his companies with the US military. StarLink is used heavily in battlefield communications [1]. He sought to deny the courtesy to one of our allies when Russia disrupted Ukraine's satellite communications, but eventually reversed course over the optics of it [2]. Musk's Grok is going to be used by…

None of those suggest "heavily intertwined". More like the US military has decided that it's a smart move to take advantage of Musk's technology. As for the Ukraine thing, I read that Musk was trying to comply with US law in avoiding making foreign policy. It's no surprise that the military uses Starlink, just like they use cars. As for grok, of course the military is going to buy what they want.

Of course it does. And I should have said not just the military, but the government in general. From day 1 he was working to infiltrate government databases and networking. He was having his DOGE lackeys installing Starlink at the White House [0] and buildings of federal agencies he was raiding to exfiltrate PII and sensitive, if not classified, data from to his own servers for likely use to influence American sentiment and target groups or individuals. So says a whistleblower Dan Berulis [1] and a DOGE goon was caught by Secret Service trying to install a Starlink device on the roof of the Eisenhower Federal Building across from the White House [2]. There is absolutely no valid need for a private network operating in parallel with the US government's system. Unless the intent was to avoid detection when exfiltrating data to private systems.

0. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/18/musk-starlin...

1. https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355896/doge-nlrb-elon-...

2. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/doge-roof-elon-musk-st...

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

#269

Post by [deleted] »

bdamm wrote: post #172
foxglacier wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roman construction was also much less efficient because they had no material (besides wood) capable of carrying load in tension. Rebar allows us to make cheap practical structures that are impossible with just concrete - roman style or not.

It would be quite fascinating to see what kind of structure we could produce if we decided to make the longest lasting cement structures we could create with modern technology, and assuming minimal maintenance over the lifetime of the building. A one-and-done kind of structure. I bet we could do fairly well. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. We've learned a lot about how to form exceptionally long lasting ceme…

[deleted]

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

#270

Post by User23 »

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…

I've felt for a long time that the field relies rather a bit too hard on absence of evidence being evidence of absence.
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