A complex 476,000-year-old wooden structure has been found at an archaeological site in Zambia, Africa, the oldest ever discovered. Paleoanthropologist Giorgio Manzi explains why it is an extraordinary discovery that is so important for a better understanding of the ancestors from which we descend.
Interview with Giorgio Manzi
Paleoanthropologist, Professor at the Institute of Environmental Biology at the University of La Sapienza in Rome
On the left Professor Giorgio Manzi, on the right the 476,000 year old wooden structure and its discoverers. Photo credit: Wikipedia / Larry Barham, University of Liverpool
In the archaeological site of Kalambo waterfallsIn Zambia (Africa), a British research team has made one extraordinary discovery. Scientists from the University of Liverpool and Aberystwyth University led by Professor Larry BarhamIn fact, they found one complex wooden construction which, according to dating analyses, was well built 476,000 years ago. That is, long before Homo sapiens emerged, some 180,000 years later. Therefore, one of our distant ancestors was already able to create something Instruments with this material, perhaps with other stone tools. Experts believe that the structure was built interlocking Built by a Carthusian craftsman, it could have served to contain the frequent floods or served as a bench for the construction of other artifacts. It is simply extraordinary considering it is almost half a million years old.
“This discovery changed the way I think about our early ancestors. Forget the “Stone Age” label, look at what these people did: They created something new and magnificent out of wood. “They used their intelligence, imagination and skill to create something they had never seen before, something that had never existed before,” enthused Professor Barham, who teaches in the Department of Archeology and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool. “They changed their environment to make life easier, if only by building a platform on which one could sit by the river and do daily tasks. “These people were more similar to us than we thought,” the scientist added. To better understand the significance of this discovery, the results of which were published in the journal Nature, Fanpage.it contacted the professor Giorgio Manzi, Professor at the Institute of Environmental Biology at the University of La Sapienza in Rome. Here’s what he told us.
Photo credit: Larry Barham, University of Liverpool
Professor Manzi, first we ask you why this 476,000-year-old wooden structure is so important from a scientific perspective
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There are various reasons. First of all, it confirms something that we have known for a long time: living creatures near us – by this somewhat broad expression I even mean the Australopithecus and certainly also the first representatives of the genus Homo, such as Homo habilis – they were not just producers of Stone tools from the Paleolithic, but used these tools to make other tools. So it’s a kind of assembly line, let’s call it that, that we’re the only ones on the planet to make. There are other life forms that use tools or even make them themselves, for example chimpanzees or beavers that build dams, staying on the topic of wood. But man and his ancestors are the only ones who make one tool into another and another and so on. Maybe on different surfaces: stone, horn, wood, etc. etc. This is the first important fact.
The second?
The second reason is that wood, like other perishable materials, is unfortunately almost never found in archaeological sites. Traces of the use of wood have been found, much older than 476,000 years ago, but actually traces. Maybe a small, sharp instrument. We find something more substantial around 400,000 years after the present in Europe in peat deposits, a material that preserves organic finds, including wood, in a special way. They are the famous Schöningen spears. It is a site in Germany where these beautiful spears, a few meters high, were found between 1994 and 1998. They are long, pointed at the top and also hardened by fire. There are also other structures, probably made of wood, of which only the stone bases remain. An important European location from this point of view, which has already been discussed somewhat, is Terra Amata in southern France. Here a cobblestone was found arranged in a peculiar arrangement, suggesting the base of a tent, probably made of wood and branches.
The third reason for interest is that we are dealing with something truly special. We are not dealing with an architectural hypothesis like that of Terra Amata, nor are we dealing with small objects like spikes.
Photo credit: Larry Barham, University of Liverpool
In fact, the photos published by his colleagues show a very large structure
Not only is it large, but it is also far more complicated than a spear. Here we are dealing with a real work of craftsmanship, as we would call it in today’s words, even assuming a real architectural structure. In particular, these connections they identified between two elements are similar to those that a wood craftsman still makes today. Or rather, it was done until a few decades ago or in the 19th century, now there are few craftsmen left. Maybe to build the jamb of a door, the connection for a walkway. It is clear that we do not know what it was for, but it is complex. It is technically non-trivial and architecturally complex and mysterious, if we want to use this almost exaggerated (but not too much) term.
We have read some hypotheses about the function of this structure: a platform to counteract the frequent flooding in the area, a bench to work on other artifacts, or even part of a house. What do you think it’s about?
“Home” seems to me to be an exaggerated word, let’s say a refuge, a refuge. The Tuareg call them ratheren. It could be a shelter, not a building, or a door to enter a building, even a small one. We would play a little too much with our imagination. Let’s first assume that we don’t know what it was for and that, given what we know about this time and these populations, it is likely that they were temporary structures. Maybe for a specific purpose. This is the third really striking element, which is that in the context of very rare wood evidence in prehistory and given the fact that we could already imagine it, we now have one of the most beautiful pieces of evidence, we now know that people did this with theirs Stone tools and other tools made from other materials did. We also have a complicated and sophisticated structure.
Photo credit: Larry Barham, University of Liverpool
And who could have built this structure? Homo sapiens (modern humans) certainly not, as they emerged about 300,000 years ago, long after the structure was dated
In my opinion, the creator of this miracle is probably Homo heidelbergensis. We have only known him better for a few decades. Due to the name and the fact that it is a single species, it is somewhat debated among various experts. There is an ongoing debate. Simply put, it is a large, important species, especially because it gave rise to three far better-known descendants: the Neanderthals of Europe; Homo sapiens (us) in Africa, where the artisans are located; and the Denisovans. There is a type of trident that branches off from this ancestral species. For the same reason, we – Fabio di Vincenzo and I, together with Chinese colleagues – have hypothesized that an origin in Africa is associated with a strong demographic bottleneck. It’s all in a paper published in Science a few weeks ago. We hypothesized that Homo heidelbergensis appeared in Africa around 900,000 years ago, long before wooden construction, as a result of a major demographic bottleneck identified by our Chinese colleagues’ algorithms. It was precisely from this genetic and demographic bottleneck that a new species would have emerged with “new” biological and ecological resources, which would have allowed it to spread, migrate to Eurasia and subsequently give rise to the Neanderthals and Denisovans, and… us Homo sapiens in Africa.
The two stories are therefore very closely linked
Yes, because the new species has more resources than its ancestors, having overcome this very strong bottleneck around 800,000 years ago. It emerged from this crisis and this epochal drama. Perhaps he also had the new resources to work wood better.
Photo credit: Larry Barham, University of Liverpool
Have you hypothesized the cause of this demographic bottleneck?
The climate probably. It must have been particularly hard back then. About a million years ago, glacial cycles began to repeatedly affect the planet north of the Mediterranean in the form of real glaciation, while in Africa, where this bottleneck existed, there were periods of great drought. Hence fragmentation of the environment, reduction of resources, food and population.
Therefore, this was the evolutionary push that gave life to the three species, including ours
According to evolutionary biology, major evolutionary innovations occur in small, isolated populations. A genetic bottleneck of this kind was, paradoxically, generative in its dramatic nature.
Were the builders of the wooden structure nomads or sedentary people? I read somewhere that this work could indicate a certain sedentary nature on the part of its creators
They were relatively nomadic. They were so to the extent that all hunters and gatherers are. It depends a lot on the context and the moment and there is no real rule. However, they tend to be annual nomads. They move through the territory and find themselves in the same places again the following season. They spend the summer on one side and the winter on the other, hunting natural resources, because the hunter-gatherer lives on what nature offers. They may also have structures found in the same location the following year, but permanent populations will emerge much later, much later.