“We can probably assume that wooden tools have been around just as long as stone ones, that is, two and a half or three million years,“ he said. “But since wood deteriorates and rarely survives, preservation bias distorts our view of antiquity.” Primitive stone implements have traditionally characterized the Lower Paleolithic period, which lasted from about 2.7 million years ago to 200,000 years ago. Of the thousands of archaeological sites that can be traced to the era, wood has been recovered from fewer than 10.
Was the Stone Age Actually the Wood Age?
Submitted 6 months ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
Comments
Zachariah@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Trashcan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Why does Americans publishers insist on using strange and “random” object to measure height and length?
SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 6 months ago
Americans will use anything but the metric system.
XTL@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
Anything but the international standard system of units, that is.
Lath@kbin.earth 6 months ago
This can go two ways:
- well yes, but actually no
And
-well no, but actually yes
Agent641@lemmy.world 6 months ago
But only for ritual/ceremonial use
- well yes, but actually no
SteposVenzny@beehaw.org 6 months ago
Since neither spruce nor pine would have been available at the lakeshore, where the site was located, the research team deduced that the trees had been felled on a mountain two or three miles away or perhaps even farther.
300,000 years seems like a long time to be confident about what trees grew where, no?
silence7@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
Each species tends to prefer very specific conditions, and in this case, they’ve got evidence that they were not manufactured where they were found. Per the paper:
They likely were introduced as finished tools to the site since working debris of the initial production stage is absent (bark/branches), while point fragments and traces of reworking demonstrate spears and DPSs were used and repaired on-site. They can be considered curated tools of personal gear used and maintained for as long as possible.
The exact location isn’t something they know, but it’s very clear that they were initially manufactured elsewhere.
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I’ll go one further, it was the textile age. Thread (and string and rope and sewing) was the huge technological revolution that shaped humanity. That stuffs even more entropic than wood though.