Chelsea, I found an interesting article today from a source I've never used before. So, you know,
let's take it with a grain of salt, but it's interesting nonetheless. This is a website called
ZME Science. Okay. And the article was written September 25, 2023 by Furman Koop. And the title
of this article is Archaeologists Discover a Half Million Year Old Wooden Structure and It's Not
Built by Homosapiens. Who the hell is it built by? Well, we'll get there. Okay. Half a million years
ago, much earlier than it was previously believed possible, a human species was using wood to
build structures according to a new study. The research report on the dig of well-preserved wood
at the archaeological site of Colombo Falls in Zambia, dating back at least 476,000 years and
predating the evolution of homosapiens. The researchers said stone tool cut marks on the wood
show that early humans shaped and joined two logs to make a structure, likely the foundation of a
platform. This is the earliest evidence of the deliberate crafting of logs to fit together as
evidence for the human use of wood had been limited to its use for making fire sticks and spears.
Wood is rarely found at ancient sites as it's usually rotten and disappears. However, the
permanently high water levels of the Colombo Falls preserved its precious specimen. The finding also
challenges the view that stone age humans were nomadic. At Colombo, these humans would have
had a long-lasting source of water and enough food to settle down and build permanent structures.
And I just want to interject a little bit right here. They keep using the term human,
despite the fact that they said this predates homosapiens. It's because it's likely a pre-ancestor
of humans. So like homo erectus as opposed to... Yeah, that's what I was assuming. Do they clarify
that in the article? I don't think so, but I just thought I had to make that an understanding of what
they're saying. They specifically said it wasn't homo sapien though, did they not? Yeah, they did.
Okay, so they didn't clarify. Because homo sapiens didn't evolve until, I believe it was 300,000
years ago, maybe 200,000 years ago. So homo sapiens didn't exist at that time, yeah. Okay, so they
indirectly said that. Yeah, okay. So the wood found in Zambia was too old to be directly dated using
radiocarbon techniques. Instead, the researchers at the University of Liverpool and Abercith with
University used a technique called luminescence dating, which used for the last time minerals in
the sand near the vines were exposed to sunlight to determine their age. That's interesting. Never
heard of that. Yeah, that's crazy. This method allows researchers to go back much further in time
and gives, quote, a glimpse into human evolution. Jeff Duller, one of the study authors, said this
in a news release. Using luminescence dating, Duller found that the structure was 476,000 years old.
They also dated four wooden tools found in the area, such as a wedge, at 324,000 years old.
So that's, that's a huge gap, 150,000 years. Yeah. The researchers don't know which ancient human
species made the structure in the tools, but it's unlikely to have been homo sapiens. The earliest
fossils of homo sapiens found so far date from 300,000 years ago and were found in Israel,
Dull told CNN. So there you go. He believes the people who have made the structure were cognitively
sophisticated and it would be very exciting to figure out who constructed this. Colombo Falls
is located on the Colombo River above a 235 meter waterfall on the border between Zambia and the
Rukwa region of Tanzania at the edge of Lake Tanganyek. The area is a candidate to become a
World Heritage site from UNESCO for its archaeological significance and it was first excavated in 1960
by Professor John Clark and a quote to finish this off. I believe this is from Duller. Our research
proves that this site is much older than previously thought. So its archaeological significance is
now even greater. It adds more weight to the argument that it should be a United Nations
World Heritage site. Said Duller hoping to continue making discoveries in the area in the
coming years. So that's super interesting. I believe we knew that Neanderthals and Denisovans
were both tool users. However, pre-ancestors to humans, pre-homo sapiens like Homo erectus and
previously. I had never heard that they were tool users so that is very interesting to find out and
to find something dated that far back is huge. Yeah, that's a really cool article and I just
quickly because I never heard of luminescence dating before I quickly googled it and just a quick
search on it tells me the accuracy of this technique is about 10%. So yeah, just wanted to say that.
But very cool nonetheless. I am gonna hope that a professor, yeah and I do hope that a professor
that's using it is confident in it and knows what he's talking about to be able to confidently say
it's 476,000 years old. It could be off by about 90%. It turns out some kids built it last year.
Man, was it shitty? Yeah, it was already rotten. Kids are not good craftsmen and I think it's super
interesting if that does actually lead to somewhat reasonable estimations of age. Like it does solve
the problem of you need matter that can be carbon dated, mostly carbon, to be able to carbon date
things. So there's certain things that you like to unearth and you're like how old is it? There's
just no carbon present, say like stones. So you can't tell when things were actually carved.
Yeah, yeah that's a couple interesting things. I was gonna tell how old it is. Yeah, but that's
probably enough on this. You guys are now educated enough and better than the rest of society for at
least 48 hours. At that point you will come down to the average or possibly below it in fact,
until you get your fix of Journey to the Fringe. So please tune in for your own sake. Bye.