Oldest wooden tools unearthed in East Asia show that ancient humans made planned trips to dig up edible plants
Archaeologists have discovered 35 wooden tools of the age of old stone in China which, according to them, show impressive know-how, advanced cognitive skills and offer new perspectives on what ancient humans could have eaten.
The 300,000 old -fashioned tools are the oldest wooden artefacts never documented in East Asia, according to a study published Thursday July 3 in the journal Science. They include pinwashing sticks and hardwood, hooks for cutting roots and small pointed tools to extract edible plants from the ground.
“This discovery is exceptional because it preserves a moment in time when the first humans used sophisticated wooden tools to harvest underground food resources”, the main author of the study Bo liProfessor at the Earth School, the Atmosphere and the Life Sciences at the University of Wollongong Australia, said in a statement.
The tools date from the early Paleolithic period, also known as old stone age (3.3 million to 300,000 years). Wooden artefacts of this time are extremely rare due to organic decomposition, and only a handful of archaeological sites have given similar objectsAccording to the new study. But most of these objects, including Schöningen spears in Germanywere designed for hunting – These new tools were designed to dig.
The researchers discovered the tools buried in oxygen-poor clay sediments on the banks of an old lake in Gantangqing, an archaeological site in the southwest of the province of Yunnan in China. The sediments have preserved deliberate polishing and scratch marks on the tools, as well as the plant and the soil remain on some of the edges which have given researchers indices on the function of the tools.
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“Our results suggest that Gantangqing Hominines have made strategic use of the lake food resources,” the researchers wrote in the study. “They made planned visits to the lakeshore and brought with them made of selected wood to exploit underground tubers, rhizomes or horns.”
These planned visits show that 300,000 years ago, human ancestors in East Asia were manufactured and used tools for specific purposes, demonstrating considerable foresight and intention, researchers wrote. The artifacts also suggest that these first humans had a good understanding of the plants and parts of edible plants, the researchers noted.
“The tools show a level of planning and know-how that calls into question the idea that the homes of East Asia were technologically conservative,” LI said in the press release. This idea is rooted in previous discoveries in East Asia of stone tools which seemed “primitive” compared to the tools found in Western Eurasia and Africa, according to the study.
The researchers dated the tools using a technique developed by Li which uses infrared luminescence and another method called Electronic spin resonancewhich measures the age of a material through the number of electrons trapped inside its crystal defects due to exposure to natural radiation. The two produced estimates that the wooden tools were between 250,000 and 361,000 years old.
The plant remains on the tools has not been identified because their decomposition is too advanced, but other remains of Gantangqing plant indicate that the first humans ate bays, pines, hazelnuts, kiwis fruits and aquatic tubes, according to the study.
“The discovery questions the previous hypotheses on early human adaptation,” said Li in the press release. “While contemporary European sites (like Schöningen in Germany) focused on hunting big mammals, Gantangqing reveals a single plant -based survival strategy.”
