Oldest wooden structure in the world unearthed

As early as 476,000 years ago, our ancestors built structures out of wood and used special tools. This is evident from a discovery that archaeologists made in Zambia, Africa.

The simple structure, which Larry Barham of the University of Liverpool and his colleagues unearthed on the banks of the Kalambo River, consists of two connected tree trunks. A notch has been made in one of the pieces of wood so that the trunks are perpendicular to each other. A digging stick and other wooden tools, which are of a more recent date, were also found.

Scientists cannot definitively identify the wooden structure, but believe it was a raised platform. It could have been used as a walkway, for drying food or firewood, or as a base for building a home.

Whatever the purpose of the construction, it happened an incredible 100,000 years before modern humans (Homo sapiens) even existed. For Barham and colleagues, this shows that hominins were systematically processing wood long before us.

“The fact that the wood has remained in place and intact for half a million years is extraordinary. And it gives us a real insight into this period,” said Geoff Duller, co-author of the study on the find, which was published in the journal Nature. “It completely changed my perspective on what these early humans were capable of.”

Duller was there when the wooden structure was discovered in 2019. Now her age could be determined. The problem was that the pieces of wood were too old to date directly using radiocarbon techniques. Instead, the team used something called luminescence dating. This method measures the natural radioactivity in the minerals in the sediment surrounding the wood to determine when it was last exposed to sunlight.

Scientists aren’t sure what type of early human made the wooden framework and tools, but it’s highly unlikely it was our own species. The oldest known fossils of Homo sapiens date from about 300,000 years ago, Duller says. A 300,000-year-old skull from another Zambian site has been identified as Homo heidelbergensis, a possible common ancestor of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals.

According to Duller, the complexity of the structure indicates that people were cognitively sophisticated and able to follow a plan. The professor of geography at Aberystwhyth University believes prehistoric people could only do this because they spoke to each other.

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