Archaeologists have found an ancient wooden structure at the archaeological site of Kalambo Falls in Zambia. This structure — dated to about 476,000 years ago — has no known parallels in the African or Eurasian Paleolithic and may represent the earliest use of wood in construction.
Wooden artifacts rarely survive from the Early Paleolithic as they require exceptional conditions for preservation.
Therefore, archaeologists have limited information about when and how hominins used this basic raw material or how Paleolithic humans structured their environments.
“Our find has changed how I think about our early ancestors,” said University of Liverpool’s Professor Larry Barham.
“Forget the label ‘Stone Age,’ look at what these people were doing: they made something new, and large, from wood.”
“They used their intelligence, imagination, and skills to create something they’d never seen before, something that had never previously existed.”
“They transformed their surroundings to make life easier, even if it was only by making a platform to sit on by the river to do their daily chores. These folks were more like us than we thought.”
Professor Barham and colleagues discovered an ancient wooden structure at the archaeological site of Kalambo Falls, which lies above a 235-m (772-foot) waterfall on the border of Zambia with the Rukwa Region of Tanzania at the edge of Lake Tanganyika.
The structure includes two preserved interlocking logs joined transversely by an intentionally cut notch. The upper log had been shaped, and tool marks were found on both logs.
The logs could have been used to construct a raised platform, walkway or foundation for dwellings in the periodically wet floodplain.
“This discovery challenges the prevailing view that Stone Age humans were nomadic,” the researchers said.
“At Kalambo Falls these humans not only had a perennial source of water, but the forest around them provided enough food to enable them to settle…
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