Archaeologists discover half a million-year-old wooden structure — and it’s not built by Homo sapiens

Nearly half a million years ago, ancient humans at Kalambo Falls in Zambia shaped and fitted together large pieces of wood to build a substantial structure. The discovery, dated to at least 476,000 years ago, predates the evolution of Homo sapiens and provides the earliest known evidence of humans using wood for construction.

The researchers said stone-tool cut marks show that the early humans shaped and joined two logs, possibly to create the foundation of a platform, walkway or raised working area. The precise purpose remains uncertain, but the builders clearly modified the logs so they would fit together. This is the earliest evidence of the deliberate crafting of logs to fit together, as evidence for the human use of wood had been limited to its use for making fire, sticks and spears.

Wood is rarely found at ancient sites, as it usually rots and disappears. However, the permanently high water levels at Kalambo Falls preserved this precious specimen. The finding also challenges the view that Stone Age humans were constantly mobile and invested little effort in modifying the places where they lived. At Kalambo, people had dependable access to water, woodland and food. They stayed long enough, or returned often enough, to undertake a construction project that required planning, tools and considerable physical effort.

Ancient, mysterious wood

The wood found in Zambia was too old to be directly dated using radiocarbon techniques. Instead, the researchers at the University of Liverpool and Aberystwyth University used a technique called luminescence dating, which uses the last time minerals in the sand near the finds were exposed to sunlight to determine their age.

This method allows researchers to go much further back in time and gives “a glimpse into human evolution,” Geoff Duller, one of the study authors, said in a news release. Using luminescence dating, Duller found that the structure was 476,000 years old. They also dated four wooden tools found in the area (such as a wedge) at 324,000 years old.

The researchers don’t know which ancient human species made the structure and the tools, but it’s unlikely to have been Homo sapiens. The oldest widely accepted early members of our species come from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco and date to around 315,000 years ago — more than 150,000 years after the Kalambo structure was made. Dull told CNN that he believes the people who made the structure must have been cognitively sophisticated.

Several hominin species lived in Africa during the broader period, but no fossils were found beside the logs that would allow researchers to identify the builders. Whoever they were, the construction shows that they could select suitable materials, shape large timbers and solve the practical problem of joining them together.

Kalambo Falls is located on the Kalambo River, above a 235-meter waterfall on the border between Zambia and the Rukwa Region of Tanzania, at the edge of Lake Tanganyik. The area is a candidate to become a World Heritage Site from UNESCO for its archaeological significance. It was first excavated in 1960 by Prof. John Clark.

A prehistoric “Wood Age”

Discoveries made since the Kalambo study was published suggest that sophisticated woodworking was not an isolated experiment. Instead, ancient humans may have relied extensively on wood, leaving behind an archaeological record that has largely vanished through decay.

In 2025, researchers reported 35 worked wooden objects from Gantangqing in southwestern China. The assemblage, dated to between roughly 361,000 and 250,000 years ago, included digging sticks and smaller pointed implements. Wear patterns and plant remains suggest that people used some of the tools to dig up roots, tubers and other underground foods. The find provided the first substantial evidence of a prehistoric wooden-tool tradition in East Asia.

Then, in 2026, archaeologists described two wooden implements found at Marathousa 1, an ancient lakeshore site in Greece. Dating to approximately 430,000 years ago, they are the oldest known handheld wooden tools. One, made from part of an alder trunk, may have served as a digging stick or a tool for stripping bark. The purpose of the much smaller second object remains unclear.

Neither discovery displaced Kalambo’s central record. The Greek artifacts are handheld tools, while the fitted logs from Zambia remain the oldest known evidence of humans using wood structurally. Together, however, the sites reveal a technological world that stone artifacts alone cannot capture. Early humans may have lived not only in a Stone Age, but also in a largely invisible Wood Age.

A World Heritage site

Kalambo Falls is located on the Kalambo River, above a roughly 235-meter-high waterfall on the border between Zambia and Tanzania, at the edge of Lake Tanganyika. Archaeologists have repeatedly returned to the area since John Desmond Clark led major excavations there in the 1950s and 1960s. The preserved sequence records hundreds of thousands of years of human activity, making Kalambo one of Africa’s most important prehistoric sites.

The study was published in the journal Nature.

This article was published in 2023 and has been edited to include additional information.

This story originally appeared on ZME Science. Want to get smarter every day? Subscribe to our newsletter and stay ahead with the latest science news.