Was the Stone Age the Wood Age?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/04/science/archaeology-neanderthals-wood.html

by Brajeshwar • 2 years ago

85 123 2 years ago

retrac3• 2 years ago

Of course. And bone and antler, too. One of the primary techniques for manufacturing stone tools - shared by Neanderthals and probably other pre-human hominids - was (is?) using a piece of wood or bone, as the hammer. The wood is softer, but it's elastic, and it deforms when it impacts, and transfers the energy in a different way. The resulting tools are distinct, and the development of the soft hammer techniques might have been one of the first advances, beyond trying to make a rock with a sharp edge at all.

Very exciting to find actual evidence though. Organic implements almost never ever survive.

bee_rider2• 2 years ago

That’s interesting. Nowadays I think (although I’m certainly not very handy) soft faced hammers are mostly used to protect what you are hammering, right? So it is mostly an aesthetic thing.

Of course ancient humans also had a sense of beauty, but I guess I tend to assume they were much rougher with their construction. I wonder what they were trying not to scuff.

kadoban• 2 years ago

For stone age tools it would have been less for the aesthetics and more for: what else are you going to use? You can use stone to hit stone, but depending on the stones and the intent (and the technique), achieving the right results might be difficult or impossible.

Other options: you don't have metal really. You could grind stuff, maybe, but that's a _lot_ of effort.

So soft faced hammers should have had a place just by virtue of lack of other good options. My understanding is that for several things it'd be a lot of effort but relatively low technique required and relatively low risk of just cracking/smashing whatever you're trying to work on into uselessness.

ReleaseCandidat4• 2 years ago

mostly used to protect what you are hammering

Yes, but that still includes tools like woodworking and wood carving chisels, froes, axes, metal splitting wedges (to protect against metal splinters flying around),...

blastonico• 2 years ago

Yes, Ronnie Wood played in the Stones in the same age.

TomK32• 2 years ago

They even had electricity thanks to Charlie Watts.

pfdietz2• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism

szundi• 2 years ago

Historians like to name things after weapons technology eras

jansan• 2 years ago

They like to name the eras after the relics they find. And since wood rots, the name "stone age" may be a great example of survivorship bias.

Tagbert• 2 years ago

Stone tools were not really weapons. Some could have been used that way but most of the tools we’ve found were about obtaining and preparing food and clothing. And maybe about shaping wood.

adrian_b• 2 years ago

Many stone tools were not weapons, but already the Neanderthals used spear points made of stone, which were glued on wooden hafts.

Later, the modern humans used frequently arrow points made of stone.

tuggi• 2 years ago

http://archive.today/HWex0

GolfPopper• 2 years ago

Articles like this always make me wonder, if there was another intelligent species in Deep Time, if they never engaged in wide-spread reshaping of the planet (huge population, large-scale mining and construction, etc), how would we be able to tell they existed?

lumost2• 2 years ago

The concept of prior industrial civilizations was explored in a 2018 paper https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.03748. If you exclude industry, it could be exceedingly improbable that we would find fossil evidence of such creatures unless the species existed for several million years.

amanaplanacanal2• 2 years ago

I would think that they would have discovered and burned all the hydrocarbons, just as our civilization is in the process of doing.

lupusreal• 2 years ago

There's a problem recognizing intelligent species for what they are even if we can meet them face to face. Dolphins, crows, octopus, orangutans, ... Since they don't build civilization as we conceive it, asserting their intelligence is controversial.

0xbadcafebee• 2 years ago

One could also argue that a truly intelligent species would not build civilizations, as they tend to create more problems than they solve. The natural solution to natural problems is to evolve, and that works pretty dang well for pretty much all known life, other than our own.

mikepurvis• 2 years ago

Aren’t there certain atmospheric gases that are felt to be only likely to be present in quantity as a result of industrialization, therefore if we see the spectral signatures of those it’s a candidate planet for civilization?

slowhadoken3• 2 years ago

Some prehistoric group probably didn’t shape the planet on a large scale because there weren’t that many of them and they weren’t knowledge or organized enough.

BirAdam• 2 years ago

Were there some other intelligent species (or even our own) that developed some advanced civilization before 13 thousand years ago, we’d have evidence in plant and animal life. Supporting large populations required humans to selectively breed all of the plant and animal foodstuffs that humans eat today. As such, we’d expect to find animals and plants that were different from wild specimens at the same layers in Earth.

b1122• 2 years ago

Would we?

We don't dump our crops in bogs, nor bones of cattle. In fact we plough the crop remains into the dirt for the health of the soil, and we grind up the bones of food animals for feed and other uses.

All of our buildings and works would disappear pretty fast, and a simple ice age scours the earth very effectively.

13k years is maybe not enough without an ice age, but in 50k years? No trace, except they'd think a meteor struck and caused a mass extinction event.

(I'm not even sure our last 200 years, where we really expanded, would even be a blip in fossil records)

exogenousdata• 2 years ago

I’ve often thought that the Northeast of America heavily suggests an “Intelligent Hand”. The sheer amount of plants that are edible is mind boggling. Apples, acorns, elder/choke berries, walnuts, hazelnuts, onions, garlic, cattails, dandelions, cabbage — just to name a few. And that doesn’t include all the medicinal plants like willow bark for aspirin or aromatics like violet, lilac & sage.

And it’s not just the sheer number of varieties, but also how incredibly accessible and nutrient rich that they are. It always feels to me like magic that I can eat entire meals for weeks at a time just off the land in the northeast during the spring, summer & fall seasons. It feels like someone tweaked things to grow these kinds of plants specifically for easy human consumption.

Then again, could be I’m just overthinking. :o)

AnimalMuppet• 2 years ago

Depends on how long ago it was.

Two billion years ago? We wouldn't find traces of their industrial activity in rocks - almost all the rocks are gone. We wouldn't notice evidence of mining activity - those mines have been buried by sedimentation, subduction, or vulcanism. We wouldn't find it in atmospheric gas isotopes - those isotopes have long since decayed.

Now if it were 10 million years ago, it is much more likely that we would know.

pfdietz2• 2 years ago

Much of the iron being mined today was deposited about 2.4 billion years ago, when ferrous iron in the oceans was oxidized and precipitated out as insoluble oxides in Banded Iron Formations.

There are even petroleum deposits whose source rocks go back a billion years. And most coal was deposited in the Carboniferous (thus the name).

pvaldes3• 2 years ago

if there was another intelligent species in Deep Time, if they never engaged in wide-spread reshaping of the planet (huge population, large-scale mining and construction, etc), how would we be able to tell they existed?

Because they will survive. Are we talking about sharks?

slowhadoken3• 2 years ago

Trees were most likely fell with stone axes though right?

cratermoon• 2 years ago

I'm led to believe that punching them with bare hands, while slow, gets the job done.

slowhadoken3• 2 years ago

I wish I had the time to punch trees. I’m under a pile of stones to cut.

tmtvl• 2 years ago

How would that even work? Both the wood and your fist will deform to absorb the impact. You may as well try to empty the ocean by scooping up water with your hands and throwing it on the beach.

pvaldes3• 2 years ago

As the Flinstones teach everybody, don't do the work if a beaver can chop it for you

pclmulqdq4• 2 years ago

Here's the great thing about wood: every age is the wood age. We have always put the most advanced tool technology of the age toward working with wood, because wood has been eternally useful. And in turn, wood-based technology has advanced with the tools used to craft it. In a symbiotic relationship, those uses of wood advance the uses of other materials, too.

Almost every building today (most of them are small house-like structures) is made of wood, and it has been that way for recorded history. Wood shows up in many places where you would expect humans to have come up with a more advanced material today, too.

In that way, classifying a "wood age" is not all that useful.

retrac3• 2 years ago

The electrical distribution grid where I live is mostly wood and pottery.

bee_rider2• 2 years ago

Probably every, or at least almost every, age is the wood age by bulk. But in terms of high-tech manufacturing, every age could probably be called the ceramic age. Pottery, glass, spaceship tiles, computer chips.

Metals get outsized attention I think because we use them to kill each other, so switching to a new metal is quite dramatic.

Findeton• 2 years ago

In Europe almost no building is made of wood, except for decorative floors.

carlosjobim• 2 years ago

There are many countries in Europe where most buildings are made of wood.

3dworldrunner• 2 years ago

That's actually part of the history of the new world. One of the primary uses of wood in Europe throughout the colonial period was boat-building. As such, one of the primary exports of early settlers and colonial corporations in the British colonies was timber, for boats. Eventually, it led to an indigenous boat-building industry, and from that, American mercantilism.

otterz• 2 years ago

Depends where in Europe. I'd say in Northern Europe, especially in Scandinavia wood is more frequently used when building homes.

In other places the roof structure is often made of wood. And although technically it's not part of the building, concrete forms used for foundation/walls are mostly made of OSB/plywood.

pclmulqdq4• 2 years ago

You must have never lived outside of a city if that is your perception of buildings. Most of the buildings I have seen in the European countryside are made with a significant amount of wood. Even brick and stone buildings will often have a timber structure. Most buildings are not in cities, in general.

Scandanaivans use a particularly large amount of wood, even in their city centers and even for skyscrapers.

analog31• 2 years ago

Depends on when each country ran out of wood.

gerdesj• 2 years ago

Good grief, which part of Europe are you from ... Concretia?

Even in the UK we describe our normal building habit as "sticks n bricks" and there are a lot of sticks. Under my feet, right now, there are wooden joists and a plywood subfloor. I live on a hill. Some ground floor (first floor) rooms have solid conc. sub floors but the other half has the usual (1930s) two foot cavity, involving brick piers on conc raft and wooden joists to slap the floor across.

We still have a large stock of wattle and daub cottages with thatched roof too.

Every other country in Europe I have ever visited has rather a lot of wooden buildings in it too. I lived in West Germany for some years, for example.

Sticks and bricks lends itself to an environment with plenty of mud and fewer trees. It is quite brittle so no earthquakes thank you. The UK's largest recent earthquake was basically a knee trembler.

lock-the-spock2• 2 years ago

Few buildings in Europe are today solely made from wood, but nearly every building will be part wood. From the frame on which walls and floors are built up with other materials up to the roof where for most houses the very structure is made from wood, it's clear wood is one of the most essential building components. To be honest I struggle to think of any building I've ever seen that has no wood - except for semi-subterranean structures or those built out of natural structures I can't think of any.

ReleaseCandidat4• 2 years ago

Almost every house in Europe (and elsewhere) has a wooden roof frame.

graemep• 2 years ago

I have lived in multiple houses and flats in different parts of England, and all but one had wooden floors. I am pretty sure all but that had used in roofs and possibly some other places. The same is true for most houses I have been in.

xandrius• 2 years ago

By Europe you mean Legoland?

mharig• 2 years ago

The structure of near every roof, apart from the skyscrapers, ist made of wood.

kragen10• 2 years ago

most buildings in america are concrete and/or brick, though the usa is an exception. in most of america, wood is used only for roofs and illegal slums, and even most slums are mostly brick

i don't know what the situation is on other continents but i've sure seen a lot of photos and videos of concrete and brick buildings

xboxnolifes2• 2 years ago

In dense US cities maybe. Most US homes are built with wood. ~90% of US home constructions are wood framed.

retrac3• 2 years ago

Many modern brick buildings, have a wood structure with steel brackets, and the brick is only facing, and is not what is holding up the roof. Older brick homes do have brick structural walls or pillars inside, but in recent decades those are usually re-enforced concrete blocks.

pclmulqdq4• 2 years ago

Disregarding the houses, the most popular form of apartment building in the US right now is called a "5 over 1" which has a wood frame on top of a concrete first floor. The facades often aren't wood, but the buildings themselves are usually wood. Most "brick" houses in the US have a brick facade over a wooden house.

The few exceptions are in the densest cities in the US, like New York, where new construction is concrete and steel.

Canada, I am sure, is the same. Mexico and South America, not so sure. I have been around some places in Central America that have tons of wood construction, and so did the parts of Argentina and Brazil I have seen, but you may have better information. Many houses that you think are concrete or brick actually have a wood frame.

rootusrootus• 2 years ago

My impression is that concrete must be cheaper than wood, given that wood seems mostly used in high income countries and concrete is dominant in low income areas.

ronald_raygun• 2 years ago

The Devonian certainly wasnt a wood age

swaginator• 2 years ago

I really recommend this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Age-Wood-Material-Construction-Civili...

It is about how wood is arguably the most important material in human history. Covers a lot of its useful material properties, and makes very compelling arguments for how wood was instrumental in each era of human development.

flockonus• 2 years ago

What about string age?

Doesn't seem mentioned in the text or comments. This short video blew my mind: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/T4Couxopo2w

soperj• 2 years ago

It's funny that they mention the wheel when the Inca didn't use the wheel, but used ropes and tension everywhere.

aixpert2• 2 years ago

that's probably part of the Mesolithic or upper Paleolithic when people also started to use bone tools much more

The small brother of a string is a threat

rendaw• 2 years ago

I think that's probably right but... that video basically says "you could use string for lots of things long ago, the movie Castaway proved it was necessary, we use string for lots of things today." Short-form videos are not a useful source of information.

whamlastxmas• 2 years ago

Videos in general are awful for most information

HumanProtractor• 2 years ago

Ancient Greeks believed in a wood age IIRC.

aixpert2• 2 years ago

At least for the Kebaran culture in the levante there is increasing evidence that a wood age in architecture preceded the stone temples of Gobekli Tepe. (Wadi Hammeh 27)

naveen99• 2 years ago

We are in the wood age again with cellulose / rayon.

Was the Stone Age the Wood Age?

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