The origins of human history keeps getting pushed further back in time, as a recent analysis of a wooden structure in Africa dating back almost a half a million years demonstrates.
For reference, anthropologists now date the emergence of homo sapiens to about 200,000 years ago (although some argue for 300,000). The wooden structure discovered in 2019 at the archaeological site of Kalambo Falls, Zambia (upper and lower right images) obviously predates homo sapiens fossils by hundreds of thousands of years. Although the function of the wooden structure is unknown (you can see the wood in question in the upper left), it is clear that hominids deliberately carved notches that allowed the wooden pieces to fit together a bit like the American Lincoln logs children’s toys.
The wood — which shows patterns typical of stonework manipulation typical of indigenous tree species such as the Kigelia Africana, or “sausage tree” (image on lower left) — was preserved in waterlogged conditions for hundreds of thousands of years, preventing the decay that usually occurs. The specimens were dated with luminescence dating methodologies (decaying isotopes from minerals) that secured the structure to be 476+/-23 thousand years old. Archaeologists really don’t know what the bigger structure looked like or what its function was, although an idea is that it could have been part of a raised platform during times when the area was wet.
So this discovery shows that use of complicated tools, knowledge of building structures, and perhaps permanent communities all existed 200,000 years before homo sapiens ever evolved.
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