Archaeologists discovered the world’s oldest wooden structure, said to be almost half a million years old.
A team of archaeologists unearthed a simple wood structure along a riverbank in Africa. At the dig site, researchers found two bush willow tree logs that appeared to have been manipulated by ancient humans approximately 476,000 years ago. The archaeology discovery makes it older than homo sapiens – believed to have emerged around 300,000 years ago.
Scientists believe that the high water levels from the nearby Kalambo Falls and fine sediment encased the structure to help preserve the wood.
The study of the oldest wooden structure was published in the journal Nature, and declared that archaeologists had discovered “the earliest evidence for structural use of wood in the archaeological record.”
According to CNN, “The wood pieces were too old to be directly dated using radiocarbon techniques. Instead, the team used a technique called luminescence dating, which involved measuring the natural radioactivity in minerals in the fine sediment that encased the wood to figure out when it was last exposed to sunlight.”
Scientists have determined that ancient humans used stone tools to make notches in the wood to create an…
