There's an interview with one of the researchers who found this on quirks and quarks last weekend. Quirks and quarks is a long running science show on CBC in Canada. Rather interesting, the scientist said at first they thought maybe the flood waters had washed the wood into that formation or something but there are apparently clear tool marks and signs it was deliberately formed.
Truly astonishing that hominids had the instinct to build couch cushion forts long before couches, cushions, or forts were even invented.
Instinct?
And if they built couch cushion forts, then they invented the couch, the cushions and the forts.
Truly nature is healing. Ecosystems are now abundant with couches and cushions where none existed before. It’s a return to environmental normalcy.
Here's the nature article. I've been meaning to read it but have been by had the time.
Thanks mate!
I’d be much more concerned if a half million year old structure was built by homo sapiens
Curious, why do you say that?
Like others and the article said, it predates when we believe homo sapiens first evolved by a few hundred thousand years.
So if it was built by H. Sapiens either A. We really missed the mark on when we first evolved and we need to go back and really examine our findings, or B. Time travel shenanigans.
Hint: it's pretty much definitely not B.
Or C this thing was dated incorrectly (which still would be my guess tbh).
Dating wood can get really specific, sometimes narrowing down the year structures were built.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology
Unfortunately this structure is too old for this method
While radiocarbon dating is limited to about 50k years, there are other methods that work quite well. Potassium–argon dating can be used to date clay layers, but in more accurate for lava flows...
Other than that, you look for soil layers and look for global (or known local) events, then figure a date for those.
There can still be error, but less than you'd think. Tens of thousands of years at this scale, not hundreds.
Certainly an option, and that crossed my mind as well. But in the context of this part of thread, it kind of seemed like we were taking it for granted that the structure was as old as they claim for the sake of argument.
They already have fossil footprints on photographic record of h. Sapient and dinosaurs roaming together. I’ll see if I can find a pic to post. There are a lot of fossil records predating what the Bible says happened.
The photo I was talking about. Someone tried to claim it was fake, but dating proved it wasn’t.
Why?
Homo sapians didn't exist a half million years ago.
As far as we know. Shouldn't be concerning :)
Yes, it should be, because that would double the age of the species.
Can you explain why that would be concerning though? I would celebrate that richness of history.
Mostly because we’ve been studying H. Sapiens for a long time so being so wrong would suggest a big gap in a dating methodology and the way we’ve tracked human migration of their history.
Why should it be concerning as opposed to, say, fascinating?
I've seen enough films to know someone broke their time machine
If fossilization is the only way for you to recognize history its never going to be complete you will always be missing fragments that changes everything. I guarantee you their are billions if not trillions of species missing because we can only determine by fossilization.
Could be Neanderthals, no?
No. It was found in a region Neanderthals never inhabited.
Ah, just looked at the time range.
I read this in the voice of Zoidberg
Oh that was Bob...
/j
In all seriousness, this is such a cool find...
just science related topics. please contribute
note: clickbait sources/headlines aren't liked generally. I've posted crap sources and later deleted or edit to improve after complaints. whoops, sry
Rule 1) Be kind.
lemmy.world rules: https://mastodon.world/about
I don't screen everything, lrn2scroll