Researchers have uncovered a simple structure from the Stone Age that may be the oldest evidence yet of early humans building with wood.
Researchers have uncovered a simple structure from the Stone Age that may be the oldest evidence yet of early humans building with wood.
The construction is basic: a pair of overlapping logs, fitted together with a notch. It’s nearly half a million years old and provides a rare look at how ancient human relatives were working with wood and changing their environments, authors wrote in a study published Wednesday in Nature.
« It took me a while before I appreciated what we were looking at, » said study author Larry Barham, an archaeologist at the University of Liverpool. « It didn’t look very nice, to be honest. But it is much more complex than I thought. »
Barham and his team dug up the log structure—plus a handful of wooden tools—from a riverbed site that sits above a waterfall in Zambia. They think the crossed logs could have been the base for a bigger structure like a walkway or a platform.
