Archaeologists discover 476,000 year old structure, thought to be oldest known wooden structure ... 

Even 500,000 years ago apprentices were forgetting to load all the tools into the van. Fascinating.

I'm a firm believer that we've heavily under-estimated past cultures and ancient peoples due to having no written records and so little survived to show us how far they had come, so history has always assumed that past a certain point humans were just dumb and could only do elementary work, yet as more and more comes to light we are beginning to realize how much we've underestimated ancient people.

i'm an amateur sumerologist (ancient mesopotamia stuff) and feel like it's important to emphasise just how *insane* 500,000 years ago is- sometimes i fall into a stupor when i try to fathom the vastness of time that makes up what we call "ancient sumer", the amount of generations that made up all those centuries, but that's only about 2,000 years that gets my head spinning... we aren't even capable of grasping the magnitude of five *hundred thousand* years of human development, with no lasting record to tell us what really could have happened

Its unfortunate that wood decays so easily because not using stone doesn't mean humans weren't building all kinds of structures for millions of years

This type of discovery makes me wonder how many times humanity has advanced, then some cataclysmic event happens, and hits the reset button. Truly remarkable discovery.

The oldest found stone tools are dated from 3.3 million years ago. It is likely that early ancestors to humans used these to create useful things out of plant material such as structures, wood tools, rope, baskets, clothing, etc. Unfortunately, it takes a very rare set of conditions in a special environment for these organic artifacts to survive beyond a few hundred years. What a wonderful find this is!

As a joiner, carpenter and cabinet maker, this sings to my bones, amazing work guys

Mind blowing that a structure of this sophistication existed 500,000 years ago. I am also struck by the social use of such a wooden platform - as a bridge, as a dry space to socialise and congregate. Really shows how civilised humans were even back then.

To those of you that might be wondering how this discovery was dated, I found this: Luminescence dating One of the oldest wooden discoveries was a 400,000-year-old spear in prehistoric sands at Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, in 1911. Unless it is preserved in very specific conditions, wood simply rots away. But in the meandering riverbanks above the Kalambo Falls, close to the Zambia-Tanzania border, it was waterlogged and essentially pickled for millennia. The team measured the age of layers of earth in which it was buried, using luminescence dating. Grains of rock absorb natural radioactivity from the environment over time - essentially charging up like tiny batteries, as Prof Duller put it. And that radioactivity can be released and measured by heating up the grains and analysing the light emitted.

What's more amazing is that river hasn't changed course in 476,000 years.

This is amazing. I love learning about early human life and advancements. I would be curious to learn in future videos more about the context: what species of tree was it and what was the environment like that long ago and what other sorts of things do you find (you showed a bit of this) and what is known about humans or intelligent species that may have built such things at that time. Congrats on the find and keep up the truly amazing work.

For a river to continue flowing in the same rivercourse for HALF a MILLION YEARS is an extraordinary concept. So many things can change: Continents tear apart and separate, Ice Ages come and go; Watersheds with all the thousands of rills, brooks, and streams Feeding the river can turn to DESERTS of blowing Sand. It truly is miraculous for a river to have continued flowing within identically the same banks for that long. Might be reasonable for a river's meandering to bring it back to a general course repeatedly, though, as long as the watershed persists. Maybe the area with the preserved "worked" wood had been covered by ice at different times. Think I'll shut up and listen for a bit.

It's a fish trap. It was attached to a reed basket type structure. Rope is tied to the lower pole which fits in the notch. When fish/ marine reptiles enter the trap, you pull the rope to spring the trap, encasing the trapped prey inside the reed basket. They still use them in Zimbabwe/Rhodesia or they did in the 1950's anyway.

Half a million years and humans were advanced & intelligent enough to build these structures. I honestly believe humans have been on earth far longer than is currently estimated.

The biggest issue is getting it into the history books. Humanity was thriving on this planet well before the last ice age!

I grew up Canada and familiar with log cabins. The "notch" is a standard fixture of that basic shelter structure. A simple building process with modern tools. With stone tools, you just need more time.

This is a remarkable discovery and the fact these pieces of wood have survived so well is a miracle. It is also more proof that our ancient ancestors or cousins were not ignorant brutes. They were far more intelligent than previously thought. They were amazingly talented tool makers.

I lived here 50 years ago. Have walked up river from Lake Tanganyika to the falls. And spent much time at the falls with the villagers that lived there. A very early Leaky dig near-by. Archeology here is breath taking! A real sense of time and place. Also interesting modern history in the Gorge from WW ll. Your find is not surprising!!!

Thank you for this video, a truly amazing discoverie 😍 and the way it's presentated is really clear and pedagogical, showing different sides of archeological work !

Looks like a beaver didnt finish his job 😂😂😂

weve probably been finding stuff like this for years but just need the experts like yourselves to figure out what it is. This is SO intteresting! keep up the great work

This is just unbelievable. I tip my hat to whoever was lucky enough to find this items.This is a labor of love.

Fascinating. No words. Thank you for this post. I love the clear and concise explanations.

'Lincoln Logs' were among my favorite toys, along with the Erector Set.

For everyone asking, they used luminescence dating techniques. A quick search found the following: Luminescence dating refers to a group of methods of determining how long ago mineral grains were last exposed to sunlight or sufficient heating. It is useful to geologists and archaeologists who want to know when such an event occurred. It uses various methods to stimulate and measure luminescence.

Brilliant. As a luthier, I also make many of my own tools, though not of stone. I too can see the obvious toolmarks- we still make them today. I salute the skills of our ancestors, or the cousins of our ancestors, and congratulations Unversity of Liverpool for this great video.

It's inconceivable these bits of wood are recognised as a structure. If anyone who isn't a high level archaeologist were to have found it, it's just fire wood or nothing. Suggests there's a huge amount more that's gone unrecognised.

Thank you for sharing this. I've been sharing this video with my 9yr old son. I hope my kids can retain my sense of wonder over earth and everything that has come before us.

Quite possibly this could be part of a structure of a wooden bridge. As reference for the design: the Mathematical Bridge next to Queens' College, Cambridge; a sophisticated rigid and self-supporting structure composed of tangent and radial trussing, optically an arch bridge, but comprising completely straight timbers in an arrangement where the tangent members are almost completely under compression and the radial members under tension. The MB originally used iron wedges for the joinery, but after its first of two rebuilds these were replaced by nuts and bolts. Presumably this nearly half a million year-old structure had no metal parts, but a rigid structure could nevertheless be achieved by carving notches into the timbers and binding adjacent parts together with natural rope-like material. Interestingly the ratio of the lengths of the discovered timbers resembles very much that of the tangent and radial members of the Mathematical Bridge in Cambridge. A conjecture, but food for thought.

One of my favorite bits of trivia is that Lincoln logs were invented by the son of Frank Lloyd Wright. They were inspired by the anti-earthquake building techniques FLW used on the Japanese Imperial Palace, which in turn were inspired by long-standing Japanese building techniques. So the lincoln log notches you reference are a traditional japanese building style that likely goes back hundreds if not thousands of years.

As advanced as we are, one day our civilization will be as nought. People will excavate and try to piece together what happened to us

That notching is very similar to the notching used for the framework of a walkway across a marsh on a Time Team episode I watched yrs ago. They would cross like an X and tied together with cordage made from grass or sedge etc and plank went across the X so the weight of a person actually made for a stronger connection.

Thank you for sharing this! I found the water preservation details fascinating as well as the stone tool work!

I heard about this a few days ago on BBC but seeing is better. Thanks.

Wow! That was riveting. Thank you for making this video - I'm glad I watched it.

If you can't see that's the transom of a boat.. the intersecting piece, without the curve, is the rudder handle. Flip the curved piece down, there is your transom.

Incredibly interesting and so cogently presented. Thank you! I am in Merseyside now and delighted to know about some of the important facilities and people being used to reveal wonders of mankind’s ancient history.

I would like to see detailed videos of people doing stuff like they did in ancient time, finding food..grains etc and hunting, cooking, storage, what they wore and how the did it how they built their shelters…everything they did day to day for the course of a whole year. I am so fascinated by it and in my head I envision so many different things but of course it’s colored by my modern life.

Thank you for making this video!

What an incredible find! Keep up the great work!

Its almost unbelievable that a piece of wood can remain so well preserved for half a million years in what you would think is a volatile sort of climate (not permafrost).

If that path of river stream is just as old (which I doubt), I'm imagining a sturdy ledge structure to sit on and wash food, tools and apparels, while also being sort of ancient river side toilet like they still have in rural Asia, maybe? Once you have water source, communal tribes just do everything in it from one spot. Where the waterfal is present, perhaps it'd be possible to track down how far the stream had moved for the last 477 thousand years to help in finding more of the missing puzzles?

It's amazing that we'd find such a thing from so long ago.

You just found a unfinished DIY log raft project from 5 million years ago.

I would be very interested to hear how researchers ruled out other possibilities of how two pieces of wood could have ended up looking like this. To my mind, identifying specifically why other explanations are not possible is the most important piece of information and I think it is lacking here. Amazing find!

Don’t look now, but here comes the History Channel’s team of producers. In their unbiased scientifically enriched assessment there can be only one explanation. By removing all other possible explanations they will surely reach the conclusion that it can only be aliens that created it, if they haven’t done so already.

I am an archeologist and I think that this discovery opens to an amazing possibility of other theories. Thank you for your good work, wishing you outstanding other discoveries!

The napping on that stone cleaver is crazy exquisite.

I would see wood all the time growing up that looked like this, from simple water erosion in streams.

Tantalizing discovery! Well done

I accept that the river may not have been there in the past but ive seen a water powered fulcrum hammer that used a notch like that. Great video, thank you.

Looks like the remains of a camp fire circa 1995

“Stuff just keeps on getting older!” - Graham Hancock

How local are the stones/rocks being used to make tools? Is there any info on how far away materials were sourced from?

Thank you for showing these tools to me.

The wedge tool gives good credence for this theory, but I will add that when a natural fire sees overlapping wood with contact it sustains a fire for longer, and will naturally produce a notch given the right conditions. Fallen tree provide many cross over points in the position of the canopy, and water can also carry, and pile up wood. Tool marking may carry this one for early human ancestors.

Raft? Bridge? I would like to know the geology and geography of the area half a million years ago. I wonder if the river was there then. Really interesting! 👍🏼👍🏼

What an incredible people, to have such mechanical minds half a million years ago.

When they knew how to make a structure for shelter by shaping wood, then they also knew how to make platforms and boats and bridges for fishing and more convenient transportation, and many other things that can be made out of wood. That stone wedge also appeared to show some very apt craftmanship. It suggests that they could discover, invent, learn, remember, and teach. They could work together and communicate at a level beyond most animals. If you found part of a structure from 476,000 years ago, there is no telling how many thousands of years previously other structures and tools were being made. Truly amazing discovery.

I am so impressed by the ancient technologies workshop and the water preservation. While in Sirmione, Italy, I saw the remains of an ancient barque that had been found in the water. And I remember the first century fishing boat found in the Sea of Galilee… I love the imagination you and your team have applied to these projects and your conclusions. Thanks for this presentation.

I would love to take a class from this professor! Just an amazing presentation! I hope this video helps raise money for these type of projects!

I think I'll come back in another half-million years to see how that conservation went!

I have petrified dog chit from 1.8 billion years ago...

With the articulating joint on top, it resembles a Center Pole. The main structural support for a large tent or canopy.

I would love to hear some analysis on what this all means in terms of the larger picture of human development. Does it push back generally-agreed timelines? Does it require long-held beliefs to be reexamined? Etc.

I had heard about this, good to find out more.

@5:30 That process is called PETRIFICATION. It is key, to understanding, the "Megalithic" structures, with how and what they were built with, and why they are so heavy.

I've often seen trees in the forests of Montana and Colorado with similar "grooves" that were caused by leaning trees rubbing against each other in the wind.

Amazing find!

I would wager that soon after we made stone tools (4 million years ago) we immediately made wooden items. They just never survived. It only makes sense. Why would you need a stone tool unless to shape something slightly softer? Like wood. Structures, fire, clothes, weapons, & everything else came soon after which allowed us to diversify & survive. Nothing else makes sense. I hope one day we find something older.

Excellent work - thank you very much for this effort to help us better understand our past.

Thank you for such a clear explanation of what was found. Voicing the speculations and using Lincoln Logs to demonstrate was a big bonus!

the fact people did this 4-500k years ago is absolutely amazing

I really don’t like how he throws around the term “we know”. You don’t 100% know, this is your best estimate with current information.

The tool is an excellent find, but the dating is ridiculous. More archeologists need to allow room for a catastrophic view and not always a uniformitarian view. If an archeologist without knowing its source examines a piece wood rapidly petrified within a few months after the Mount St Helen’s eruption of May 1980, they will date it at least hundreds of thousands of years old. Similar situations exist in Yellowstone--not only for wood, but also for rapidly laid sediment layers after a catastrophic flood and the aftermath of runoff. Additional thought for the tool presented here: Not only could the dating of the wood be wrong in this case, but the tool could have been fashioned much more recently from much older wood.

Amazing! Even gawd wasn't around yet for this build lol.

I'd like to believe it but, maybe they're seeing what they want see. Maybe it's because I grew up by a river and he had Lincoln Logs. I see two pieces of wood rubbing together with abrasive muddy flowing water over eons.

VERY well done video. Amazing. Ty.

Unbelievable work! Very fascinating, well done!

When something is found that's older than anything like it discovered before, I request that scientists describe it as being the oldest thing of its kind discovered *so far.*

It's incredible to see such ancient things, it makes you wonder about the people who made them and what their societies were like. They weren't quite like modern humans, but they were largely the same as us.

In 2020 researchers discovered dirt that is believed to be 100 years old.

What method was used to determine the age of the wood being an organic matter?

I actually think the logs were notched into each other through friction and wave action. I have found this sort of notched wearing in log jams while walking rivers and creeks after the winter waters recede. The “tool” marks may incidental. Not disputing the possibility that humans were working wood around this time, I just think this is not very strong evidence.

I've seen a few of these before, its a see-saw. From one of the earliest theme parks. If you keep looking you should find the remains of a wooden roller coaster, or the scrambler

I MOST INTERSETING WELL PUT TOGETHER HIGHLEY INFOMATIVE & HUMBLEY NARETED VEDIO THIS OLD MAN HAS SEEN SINCE JOSPH CAMBLE PBS INTERVIEW ON POWE OF THE MYTH c. 1984. THANK YOU ALL GOoD WORK

Excellent presentation-- thank you!

Wonderful!!

Having visited la musée nationale de préhistoire, just down the road from l'abri Crô-Magnon, I have absolutely no doubt that we were as capable in the distant past as now, if not more so, because the deadwood is no longer trimmed. The essential impulse of human life remains constant.

Could it of been a raft or a smoker imagine almost 500,000ya honestly most intriguing find of my life its amazing

Has anyone seen two tree branches growing too close to one another and they create notches where the wind rubs them together?

A wooden platform in a wet, muddy area would make some sense. Could be used for scooping up water and not getting wet or fishing or spearing. Thanks.

How bout this, that piece of log landed on top of the larger piece in a rapid stream, got wedged in place but was able to rock up and down and sideways by (water) a sandy tidal fluctuation over a long period of time. The serrations made by rock shards passing over the piece in one direction and then another and another over a long period of eb and flow tidal direction change.

Great video. Thank you. I love the study of ancients and archeology.

Is it a chuck (curved piece that holds wood/leather/...) and a drill that wears or cuts a hole to have cleaned strips of Gut to sew it together ?

Its hard to see the size - but it looks more like a fire starting tool than a structure. But that would be even more even more surprising.

Wow! What a dream job to be an a maker of ancient tools! So cool. Wonderful video ❤

It’s very rare for entire structures made of wood from that long ago to be preserved. To have such a large and useful stone tool there with the structure means it must have been left in a hurry.

My guess, a practical one is a 'Dock' for fishing and tying canoes for getting upriver, the easiest way to travel.

Love this! Oh boy is it going to ruffle some vested feathers throughout the established "good ol boy" archeological community. Bout time it was shaken-up out of its sleepy complacency.