Researchers at the University of Liverpool have led an international interdisciplinary team whose discovery has attracted global interest in academia and beyond
A chance discovery of ancient wood in Zambia has reshuffled our understanding of early human capabilities and has the potential to uplift the communities in the area, said guests of the THE Connect podcast, produced in partnership with the University of Liverpool.
“The impact has been overwhelming,” said Larry Barham, a professor in the Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool and leader of the Deep Roots of Humanity project. “It made me realise that I had assumptions about what early humans could and couldn’t do.”
In September 2023, Barham and a multidisciplinary team announced the discovery of 476,000-year-old wooden tools and logs that had once been part of a structure in exposed sediment at the Kalambo River in Zambia. The two interlocking logs bore distinctive notches that allowed them to fit together. But at that time, Homo sapiens did not yet exist. It would be another 200,000 years before our species started appearing. The team’s findings were published in the scientific journal Nature.
