In 2019, researchers in Zambia stumbled upon an incredible archaeological find at Colombo Falls—nearly half a million-year-old wood that showed signs of human manipulation. This discovery suggests the wood might be part of the earliest known structure in the world. It’s mind-blowing to think that ancient humans were building things so long ago. The find gives us a fascinating glimpse into early human ingenuity. Who knew that something as simple as old wood could rewrite a part of our history?
00:00So, a team of archaeologists digging in the far north of Zambia stumbled upon something that could change all we know about early humans.
00:09Was it a Walkman? Nah.
00:11It's a wooden structure built around half a million years ago, the oldest of its kind on Earth.
00:17The construction consists of two logs that had been shaped to fit together, something like Lincoln Logs, those toy building sets.
00:24There's no chance that the two logs could have just drifted along the river and merged in that shape naturally.
00:31They were carved with sharp tools before Homo sapiens, or modern humans, appeared in Africa.
00:37Researchers don't know which species of ancient humans could manage to create something like this.
00:42But they were pretty great at planning and maybe even used some language to discuss their construction projects.
00:48It also means we can't be so sure that Stone Age folks were just wandering nomads.
00:55They might have been more settled down than we thought, with enough resources to stick around in one place.
01:00Finding wooden stuff from the Stone Age is like looking for a needle in a haystack, because it decomposes over time.
01:07Much like Beethoven.
01:08But this one was found near Colombo Falls, near the border of Zambia and Tanzania.
01:16The construction might have been a walkway, a firewood or food storage spot, or a base for shelter.
01:22It was preserved so well in waterlogged sediments that have no oxygen and kept the construction fresh.
01:28The discovery has marks left from tools that were used to make the two pieces fit together.
01:33Archaeologists also dug up four ancient wooden tools at a site – a wedge, a digging stick, a chopped log, and a branch with a notch – all dated back to over 300,000 years ago.
01:47Scientists analyzed minerals in the sand around the goodies they found and used a technique called luminescence dating to tell the age of the finds.
01:55Experts believe that they should study more waterlogged sites, because they could have more examples of ancient woodworking.
02:06Archaeologists have to be really careful while working with these finds not to damage the delicate wood, so they use plastic tools.
02:14The team that found the construction had to keep the wood wet, so it wouldn't lose traces of human activity or break.
02:21They took it to the UK to study in special tanks for underwater photography.
02:25There, they made 3D models of the wood.
02:28The earliest wooden artifact found so far is a piece of polished plank from Israel, which is over 780,000 years old.
02:37There were also some wooden tools for foraging aged 400,000 years, but none of these finds are as progressive as the wooden construction in Africa.
02:47Scientists found cotton fibers from the ancient Near East that are 7,000 years old, the oldest of their kind.
02:54The place where they were found is like a time capsule, with mud brick buildings with all sorts of ancient goodies, giving us a peek into what life was like back then.
03:04They've already found signs of ancient parties with spots for stashing food.
03:09Usually, stuff from this era turns to dust.
03:11But thanks to fancy microscopes, experts can dive deep into the sediment collected from the site and uncover all sorts of organic remnants, including these cotton threads.
03:22People used to think the fabrics here were made from local plants, but it looks like this cotton might have traveled all the way from the Indus region, which is modern-day Pakistan.
03:32The ancient village of Tel Saif might have been more connected than we thought, part of some international trade network.
03:40There's more evidence backing up this idea, like beads from Anatolia, Romania, and Egypt, and pottery from other countries.
03:47The oldest known leather shoe that was found so far was waiting for 5,500 years in a cave in present-day Armenia.
03:58A British archaeologist stumbled upon this gem under a busted jar at the bottom of a pit.
04:04Alongside the shoe was a deer's shoulder blade, wild goat horns, a fish vertebra, and some scattered pottery shards.
04:11The shoe itself is pretty simple, made from a single piece of cowhide wrapped around the right foot, held together with a leather lace running through eyelids.
04:21To keep its shape, they stuff some grass inside.
04:25Scientists are not sure who rocked this shoe, but they use radiocarbon dating to figure out its age, along with the grass stuffing.
04:32These shoes look a lot like the ones folks still wear today on Ireland's Aran Islands.
04:37The same tech and methods used to make these shoes stuck around in Europe until the middle of the 20th century.
04:45Near Leipzig, diggers found a grave from about 2,500 years before the current era,
04:51packed with over a hundred dog teeth, all lined up neat and tidy.
04:56These teeth could have been a part of a fancy flap for a handbag.
05:00The leather or fabric that was holding it together must have disappeared over centuries.
05:04If it's true, that would be the oldest purse in the world, all the way from the Stone Age.
05:11Using dog teeth and hair ornaments and necklaces for both women and men was, you know, trendy back then, according to experts.
05:19Whoever was the owner of the purse must have had a high social status, judging by the number of materials used to make it.
05:25Not counting all the toothless dogs.
05:27It looks like the oldest musical instruments ever crafted by humans are ancient flutes made of bird bone and mammoth ivory.
05:39They were discovered in a cave down south in Germany, a place showing early signs of modern humans settling in Europe.
05:47Using carbon-dating wizardry, the scientists pinned the flute's age at around 42,000 years old.
05:53According to the experts, these musical doodads might have been used for fun or during religious ceremonies.
06:00Some experts believe that music might have helped us build bigger social circles and expand our territory compared to the Neanderthals.
06:08Those guys faded into history about 30,000 years ago.
06:11In 2020, a team of scientists found a string a quarter of an inch long in France.
06:20Archaeologists unearthed a cord fragment next to a stone tool.
06:24Such twisted fibers could have been used for everything, from making clothes to fishing nets.
06:29In prehistory, there was some advanced tech, and the Neanderthals seemed to have mastered it.
06:35Scientists already knew that these early humans made tar from birch bark,
06:39and that they produced shell beads.
06:42There's even evidence of Neanderthal art.
06:44The string section and similar finds prove that our ancestors from many thousands of years ago
06:50weren't as primitive as they're often shown in popular culture.
06:54Back in the 19th century, the French found a broken slab of black granite from 196 before the current era.
07:02The stone contained one text in three scripts – Ancient Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Demotic.
07:08A French philologist was the first to crack the code.
07:12He successfully matched the Greek letters with the ones in the Egyptian script.
07:16And we were finally able to read hieroglyphs.
07:20The name of the piece of granite that made all this possible was the Rosetta Stone.
07:25With its help, among other things, scientists managed to decipher papyrus records on how the pyramids in Egypt were built.
07:32A British archaeologist, Sir Arthur Evans, excavated a vast palace complex at Nosos in the early 20th century.
07:43This was the center of Minoan culture.
07:46The palace had over a thousand rooms with colorful paintings of dolphins, griffins, and bulls.
07:51But their biggest find was at first overlooked – thousands of slabs of baked clay.
07:56The fire that brought down the palace helped preserve the tablets.
08:01No one could read the slabs as they were in some unknown language.
08:05The scientific community had to wait for another half a century before Michael Ventress cracked the code.
08:11He was an English architect and cryptographer who studied Greek and Latin.
08:15He found that the script was an archaic form of Greek.
08:19It was the oldest deciphered language in Europe – Linear B.
08:22During the Late Bronze Age, the Greek civilization that used the script vanished.
Be the first to comment