Archeologists, including at least one boffin from Aberystwyth, which is a town in Wales, were stunned when they discovered worked logs in Zambia which were almost half a million years old. This is, to date, the earliest known wooden structure or remains of such a thing ever found.
Dated by luminescence technology at a remarkable 476,000 years old, the logs appear to have been part of a platform and show clear signs of being cut by, presumably, flint or stone tools. And why is this find on the beautiful Kalumbo river remarkable?
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Boffin finds stupidly ancient log
Because one of the discoverers came from Aberystwyth? Well yes, but more than that: Human beings, Homo Sapiens, weren't supposed to exist at this point in prehistory. Our earliest fossils (H. Sap) date back to around 300,000 BC.
So this discovery of an intelligently worked wooden structure potentially busts all kinds of theories. Not least accepted archeo/anthropological orthodoxy which insists humans were nothing more than nut gatherers, bark scrapers and berry chewers until around 10,000 B.C.
Unaided reason says this is risibly absurd and now, so too, does archeology. Our ancestors were building with wood half a million years ago. Let that sink in. It's seismic.
Excuse me?
But not to be deterred from their careers on the United Kingdom's far-flung Welsh coast, our adventurous experts assure us that the people who built this structure, with flints, stone and all the rest weren't really human.
They were precursor hominids, sorry, hominins, apparently. Why? Coz H. Sap. wasn't supposed to be around then, according to the text books which make the experts cash. Sorry, peer reviewed reputation.
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Here at the Compound we ask, "Are you totally sure, coastal boffins, what about all those fossilized foot prints? Could humans, people the same as us have built a platform in Zambia 476,000 years ago?" And if so, what could they have developed and lost in the intervening millennia. I feel this is important, chime in if you like.
Justified and Ancient,
LSP
10 comments:
We have a lot to learn, LSP.
Out of Africa? Supposed in the Triassic Period, there was one super continent, labeled Pangaea. 230 million years ago. Said Pangaea then split apart into our present continents. Who is to say their weren't 'humanoids' living then and said humanoids didn't stay on the various continents that split away?
The K-Pg event, 66 million years ago took out a lot of species if the geologic evidence is to be believed. Before that time the fossil records showed dinosaurs. After that event there were no non-avian dinosaurs (birds, which are essentially the dino-ancestors did better than the land dinosaurs).
That we most definitely do, LL.
I'd say that was a very point, Mr. WSF.
Were something like humans around pre K-Pg, LL? Some say they were but the evidence is pretty tenuous at best. Still, we seem to go back way further than previously thought and people, I'm thinking the Egyptians, recognized this.
Then there's the birds, descendants of mighty and ferocious saurians. They're often fierce today, though mostly smaller than their forebears.
But will there be another extinction event? It'd be odd if there weren't, perhaps it could be focused inside the Beltway. Just a thought.
I'll wager your fighting monkey that The Timelords established the Justified and Ancient Order of Mu Mu. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsAVx0u9Cw4
And yet the continent of Africa can barely do better than worked wood beams 500,000 years later.
Well yes, Herr Doktor, just that!
MIght have to post that link and, obvs, my pals weren't in any way involved.
Anon, you'll forgive me for posting your excellent comment. Well said.
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