
7k-year-old well is the oldest wooden structure ever discovered - shafkathullah
https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/this-7-000-year-old-well-is-the-oldest-wooden-structure-ever-discovered-archeologists-say-1.4815023
======
kragen
One of the things I most enjoyed about the previous find of this kind, from
2012, was the discovery that tusk tenons were 7000 years old:
[https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0051374)
— and now we know that groove joints also date to that era, before even copper
tools.

That discovery is only about 250 years younger than this one: "A total of 151
oak timbers preserved in a waterlogged environment were dated between 5469 and
5098 [BCE]." That is, the youngest timbers were from 5098 BCE.

This one: [https://www.upce.cz/en/our-restorers-to-help-
preserve-7000-y...](https://www.upce.cz/en/our-restorers-to-help-
preserve-7000-year-old-prehistoric-well#main)
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030544032...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440320300066?via%3Dihub)

I think it's wonderful that they're able to date the wood specifically to
_5259–8 BCE_.

To put this in a worldwide human context, this is almost 2000 years before the
beginning of the Harappan civilization; 1700 years before the Sumerian
settlement of Uruk, where Gilgamesh and Nimrod ruled and from which we get
"Iraq"; 2100 years before Narmer became the first Pharaoh in Egypt; and 3600
years before the Shang rose in the land of China. In 5259 BCE there were still
woolly mammoths on two islands between the lands we now call Russia and
Alaska. But the city of Çatalhöyük had already been deserted for 400 years
after 1400 years of flourishing.

~~~
K0SM0S
Thanks for this account, I love such wider-than-history perspectives. It
literally helps us put things in perspective, realize that there is so much
already.

A city that's 200 years old today is "young" by human standards; even
civilizations (cultural shapes) a thousand years old have probably only gone
10% of the temporal distance since the first settlements.

I sometimes wonder how our current present could possibly be seen by people
7,000 years from now in the future (well, I tend to stop at 1,000 because it's
already too big, but contemplating 10,000 or 100k even is humbling). There's
this sense that we would be "ancient" to them, a different world. That most of
our preoccupations would be long solved, and that only a few memes of our
culture would remain to their day. To wonder if, in the grander scheme of
things, we're "empty" like so many times before us and will leave pretty much
nothing substantial, or if we're "decisive" like those ideas and people and
eras that shaped civilization as we know it today.

Would future eras see our computers and AI-attempts as foolish delusions like
some people thought vapor machines could solve everything? Would our cars and
planes and trains be seen as a temporary means of transportation that only
lasted a couple centuries before something much better, much more "obvious"
would take place? When would we escape Earth and grow beyond, is it for this
century or much later, would it even be a done deal by 3,000? What new science
lies beyond us in time simply because we just can't see it now, and yet we
could actually make now if we just thought of it? (like we could have invented
electricity in Ancient times, but conversely Einstein's GR was a gift from the
Gods because it was at least 100 years too early in refinement). How much of
what we take for granted is actually debatable or plain wrong; how much of
what we doubt today is actually true, the right intuition? When do we
eventually cease to be "homo sapiens sapiens" because too many mutations is
too many and we've become _something else_? How much of "something else" is of
our own doing (volition, objective) though genetics, epigenetics, culture?
Etc., etc., etc.

I find that far from being sterile or futile, these are extremely valuable
thought experiments because they let us break our current mold and observe
things from an arbitrarily different (call it "weird") standpoint. They let us
re-imagine the past and unfold it differently, thus see many futures — and as
always, plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

~~~
anticodon
I am afraid that civilization will collapse. Third world war will be
devastating. It would be difficult to restart civilization after it because we
already consumed all easily available mineral resources.

This will become a problem even if there would be no war. Energy resources had
almost finished, and no viable alternatives were found.

~~~
FeepingCreature
> Energy resources had almost finished

Reminder that the sun exists.

~~~
dredmorbius
Reminder that during the previous solar age, _with_ abundant mineral
resources, limits of development were ~500 million souls, wooden ploughs, and
largely stone-and-earth construction.

Even modest amounts of bronze and iron smelting cleared forests (for charcoal)
throughout the Mediterannean and European regions. Much of the reason for
forest regrowth throughout Europe has been the shift to other fuels.
Nonrenewable fossil fuels.

Which have issues both of abundance and atmospheric impacts.

Returning to an era of predominantly solar energy, even with our considerably
enhanced technical and scientific knowledge, absent the preindustrial ease of
access to specific materials (iron, copper, etc.), as well as that great
advance: naturally-occurring agricultural fertilisers (saltpetre from India,
guano from South America and Pacific islands), would be ... markedly different
from the present.

~~~
kragen
> _Reminder that during the previous solar age, with abundant mineral
> resources, limits of development were ~500 million souls, wooden ploughs,
> and largely stone-and-earth construction._

Plants are a very inefficient way of converting sunlight into work. The
difficulty was not a matter of energy scarcity; it was that the humans didn't
know what energy was, how to bore a cylinder, or how to vacuum-silver a
mirror. There are very significant bootstrapping difficulties, yes, but also
very significant bootstrapping resources, if we can preserve them. Knowledge
is the most important one.

> _absent the preindustrial ease of access to specific materials (iron,
> copper, etc.)_

Copper and especially iron are immensely more accessible in the humans'
landfills than they ever were in ore deposits.

Artificial fertilizer synthesis does seem like it might be particularly tricky
to carry out at a small scale.

~~~
dredmorbius
The all-in efficiency of plant-based photosynthesis -- about 1-3% for most
land plants, _possibly_ as high as 10% for algae.[1] The all-in efficiency of
solar energy is close to the same magnitude -- panel efficiencies are as high
as 37% (single-layer), in practice closer to 15-25%, and with spacing,
capacity, and other factors, tend to fall to about 5%. To which manufacturing,
installation, and disposal costs (all self-provisioned by plants) are
required.

The point remains that for _primary_ energy, we don't have a whole lot of
options, and plant productivity is much of that. A modern civilisation knocked
back _won 't_ have nuclear power, reliable electrical transmission, or
advanced battery technologies. Mobility of fuels will be limited.[2]

"Technology", a distractingly vague term, seems to be based on specific
modalities, each with its own specific capabilities and limitations.[3]
Precision boring is contingent on sufficent-quality metalurgy, based on
available materials, fuels, and smelting/casting controls, as well as
measurement and feedback (information/systems management) controls. At that,
what you buy in, say, a reciprocating steam engine, is a net fuel-to-work
efficiency gain from about 3% (Watt ~1800) to about 25% (best stationary
triple-expansion engines). Locomotive steam engines were about 10% efficienty,
barely 3x better than Watt's 1800 design.[4] That is: precision and technology
_still_ only bring you up to theoretical maximum efficiencies. Process and
systems management technology is at best a fractional factor 0 <= t < 1\.
(Many proposed technologies end up with efficiencies well below 0. We
typically don't adopt those.)

Fuels are larger multipliers. Increasing applied energy _frequently_ increases
potential output as a multiple factor: capital + process + n times more energy
results in some t _n times more output (where n > 1 and 0 <= t < 1). You can
keep applying more energy to a process for ever increasing outputs, at least
to a considerable extent -- generally to thermal, friction, vibrational,
stress, or other limits.

Landfill mining has been suggested. It was a (minor, though not miner) element
in Arthur C. Clarke's _Imperial Earth* (1976). And has long been practiced,
historically and presently, with a range of consequences.

The more general problem here is that recycling is at best less than 100%
efficient, and the generational loss is r^g (g == generations, with 0 <= r <
1). The most-recycled current materials within the US is lead, largely from
car batteries), with rates of 74%. At two generations, the remaining material
is 55%. After 10, it's less than 5%.[5] Eventually dust is your best source.
Non-ore-forming materials (e.g., rare earths) already exhibit this, the
difficulty in their sourcing isn't due to their scarcity per se (they're
relatively abundant within Earth's crust), but in their failure to
concentrate, and the immense amounts of overburden and tailings created in
their use. It's less a matter of mining than of pollution and landscape
spoilage exporting, costs China have been willing to absorb in recent decades.

The next H-B alternative, not dependent on abundant natural gas,[7] or lack of
one, will be hugely monumental. I'd hedge my bets on a bioengineered process,
though there are others being pursued, see:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01145](https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01145)

[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/ammonia-renewable-
fu...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/ammonia-renewable-fuel-made-
sun-air-and-water-could-power-globe-without-carbon)

________________________________

Notes:

1\. Both based on incident sunlight => stored energy, generally as cellulose
or lipids. Algael productivity discounts the likely impact of parasites and/or
disease on large-scale development (as does land cropping). Lifeforms other
than human are also keen on large and convenient plant-energy stores.

2\. There's little discussion of this even in histories which take an energy-
centric viewpoint such as Smil or Weissenbacher, but a key liability for
fossil fuel energy resources was that they were so unevenly distributed, and
transportation capabilities so limited. Better to (locally) gather fuelwood,
dung, press olive for oils, or render animal tallow, than to try hauling
seacoal, natural tar, or the few rare oil seeps more than a few tens of km.

Even the coal-rich US didn't transition from wood until its inland rail-based
transportation system was developed. On which coal still represents a large
share of revenues and massive constituent of total ton-miles. Oil's
development as a fuel waited in part on reliable metalurgy, the capability to
construct pipes of more than ~10cm in diameter and a few tens of metres in
length. Along with rights-of-way, a sufficient challenge that as of WWII,
major infrastructure (the Big Inch and Little Big Inch pipelines, _still in
use_ ) were constructed not by private industry but by the Federal Government.

International oil shipments were contingent on developing double-hulled
supermassive oil tankers. Ari Onassis, Greek shipping magnate, was, it turns
out, a Greek _supertanker_ shipping magnate.

After water, sand, and gravel, oil is the most-transported material in the
modern economy.

Natural gas likewise is more difficult to transport than oil or coal,
requiring hermetically-sealed containment, and high pressures and/or low
temperatures. It has a tendency to go boom in ways that coal and oil for the
most part don't, which makes neighbours even edgier than for those materials.

Transport and nonuniformly-distributed fuels are co-dependent.

3\. My thinking leads to identification of nine of these: 1. fuels, 2.
materials, 3. process (technical) knowlege, 4. causal (scientific) knowledge,
5. network dyanmics, 6. systems management (physical, social, informational),
7. information (acquisition, parsing, processing, storage/retrieval,
transmission), 8. power transmission & transformation, and 9. hygiene
(addressing unintended / undesired consequences). Still in development. See
(in slightly earlier form): [https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/klsjjjzzl9plqxz-
ms8nww](https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/klsjjjzzl9plqxz-ms8nww)

4\. Vaclav Smil, _Energy and Civilization_ , (2017). Figure 5.5, p.243.

5\. [https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/recycling-statistics-
and-i...](https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/recycling-statistics-and-
information)

6\. A chief export of Trinidad and Tobago, and the reason for that small
Caribbean island nation's hugely outsized per-capita carbon footprint.

See:

T&T EMissions Trends: [https://cdiac.ess-
dive.lbl.gov/trends/emis/t_t.html](https://cdiac.ess-
dive.lbl.gov/trends/emis/t_t.html)

T&T CO2 emissions [https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/trinidad-and-
tob...](https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/trinidad-and-tobago-
co2-emissions/)

Global per-capita emissions [https://2oqz471sa19h3vbwa53m33yj-wpengine.netdna-
ssl.com/wp-...](https://2oqz471sa19h3vbwa53m33yj-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/05/global-emissions-supplemental.jpg) (from:
[https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-worlds-carbon-
emiss...](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-worlds-carbon-emissions-in-
one-chart/))

T&T exports / economy: [https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-are-the-
major-natur...](https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-are-the-major-
natural-resources-of-trinidad-and-tobago.html)

~~~
kragen
Again, I greatly appreciate your thoughtful commentary.

Are you saying that 74% of lead discarded in the US is sent for recycling, or
that of the part sent for recycling, 74% is successfully recovered, the other
26% being lost in various kinds of waste, or what? "74%" does show up in your
source [https://prd-wret.s3-us-
west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium...](https://prd-wret.s3-us-
west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/atoms/files/myb1-2016-recyc.pdf)
as the "percentage recycled" for lead in 2012 (table 1), which is explained as
"Calculated by dividing the amount recycled by the apparent supply". On its
face, this seems to suggest that 74% of the lead bought by lead consumers,
such as battery manufacturers, was sourced from recycling, while the other 26%
came from mining or importation, without providing any information about
losses in the recycling process. Aluminum has 50% for 2016 in that same table
(down from 57% in 2012), but only about 10% of aluminum is lost to oxidation
during recycling.

The interesting question from my point of view is how the available waste
compares to natural ores, whether that waste is from recycling losses such as
dust around smelting mills, or from other sources such as treasure hunting, in
the difficulty of recovering useful material from it. Since the concentrations
of many interesting elements are orders of magnitude higher than their natural
concentrations in ores — particularly in elements like the lanthanoids which,
as you point out, do not concentrate very much† — my naïve supposition is that
landfill mining will be considerably cheaper. (Moreover, because landfills are
at the surface, it can be done without the risks of the black-damp or the
stink-damp, though perhaps surprise PCB-filled transformers might compensate.)

As for H–B, it can be carried out perfectly well on electrolytic hydrogen, but
that is only economic in the absence of a source of methane, or when energy is
abundant.

________________

I love the way you dis "technology". In your mindmap I think there is a very
significant thing missing, one which, as an illegal immigrant in a third-world
country, I am constantly aware of.

What's missing? Well, suppose you want to replicate Watt's vacuum steam
engine; let's analyze it in your framework, and see what's missing.

You need some kind of fuel, both to shape the metal and to run the steam
engine once it's finished.

You need materials — at a minimum, you need some kind of material that can
withstand the steam while holding the precise tolerances needed to seal the
cylinder, and you need some kind of sealing material, whether that's hemp,
leather, rubber, or the cast-iron, bronze, or carbon steel for Ramsbottom's
miraculous piston rings. (And, yeah, something for lubrication.)

You need the technical knowledge ("process and system knowledge" in your
diagram) to shape and assemble the parts of the engine, and the causal
knowledge ("symbolic expression and manipulation") to troubleshoot it, fix it,
and improve its design for your situation.

Although it may not be absolutely necessary, the network dynamics that enable
you to obtain all of the above, and distribute the fruits of your steam-
engine, are certainly an immense boon. Similarly for systems management
("Governance, Management, & Organization" in your diagram).

I'm not sure that you need much in the way of information processing, power
transmission, or hygiene to build your steam engine.

So, suppose you have all these things; you're a master machinist and
mechanical engineer in a post-apocalyptic village just uphill from a spring
with an urgent need to irrigate their fields (the network dynamics). You have
an ample supply of scrap metal of all kinds, plenty of books on steam-engine
design, and friends who are willing to risk their lives operating your steam-
engine once it gets built. The alpine forest nearby provides all the firewood
you could need. What are you missing?

 _You don 't have any tools!_ You aren't going to get very far building a
steam engine by banging bits of scrap metal together. You need to invest in
some capital goods, which are classically considered one of the three primary
factors of production, along with land and labor. You're going to need a
foundry with crucibles and casting flasks; a lathe, with gears or a whip to
drive it, at least some centers and a dog if not a chuck; vises; hammers;
drills; hardened steel cutting tools for the lathe, and abrasive tools to
sharpen them with; files for detail work; at least some vernier calipers if
not micrometers, and probably scales, surface plates, indicators, and a
balance; and some way to measure the composition of your scrap metal, of which
I have no idea. You can bootstrap these from raw materials, but getting there
is going to require some further intermediate tools — at least a pottery kiln,
and probably also a wood shop and some means for assaying soils.

This is an amusing omission because, in my experience, it's common both for
the vulgar to confuse tools such as cellphones with "technology" as a whole,
which of course includes the whole technological matrix that you're analyzing;
and for ignorant rulers to believe that the crucial ingredient in economic
prosperity is for an outside company to open a factory in your town, thus
"providing work".

Speaking of ignorant rulers, maybe this is in some sense implicit in your
"network dynamics" or "Governance, Management, & Organization" categories, but
I think it deserves special attention: a major obstacle to technological
development always and everywhere is violence, in a couple of different forms.
First, outright witch-burning is a constant threat, as experienced by Giordano
Bruno, the Maya codices, Steve Kurtz, Aaron Swartz, Charles Lieber, and
numerous others; second, and not entirely separate, unfreedom, expropriation,
and wanton destruction, all by means of collective violence, destroyed
Shuman's Solar Engine One, the first RepRap, Archimedes' life, Galileo's
career, and Zuse's Z1, and nipped many other promising developments in the
bud.

But such violence does not arise in isolation; it proceeds from a social
climate that nurtures and foments it, which can impede progress even when it
doesn't erupt into outright vandalism and murder. So I think there's a certain
necessary element of tolerance and admiration of technical excellence whose
lack strangles any hope of progress in most social climates. Not only did they
laugh at Fulton, the Wright Brothers, and Bozo the Clown, they laughed at
William Kamkwamba; how many other Kamkwambas has Malawi lost that way?

________________

† It isn't true that lanthanoids don't form ores _at all_ ; monazite and
bastnäsite are ores of lanthanoids (as well as actinoids). Cerium in the
earth's crust, for example, is about 60 ppm on average, but typically almost
half (which would be 500 000 ppm) of either of these ores, so it's more
concentrated there by three or four orders of magnitude. The difficulty is
that they all form _the same ore_ because they're damn near identical,
chemically speaking, which is why many of them were among the last elements to
be isolated. But this is very much not the case with landfill, in which the
lanthanoids are conveniently separated not only from one another but from the
hazardous actinoids — although cigarette-lighter flints have many lanthanoids,
if you're mining catalytic converters, they'll be entirely free of both
thorium and lanthanum.

~~~
dredmorbius
On lead recycling: I was mostly just repeating USGS's values. I _hadn 't_
looked to see their methodology, though that's a fair point. The fact remains
that even high rates of recoverability attenuate quickly through multiple
generations. Efficiency has limits.

On the ontology: that's an ontology of technological _mechanisms_.

It is _not_ a reclassification of technological fields or domains. And it
really is _not_ a dis of technology, it's an attempt to clearly define what it
is that technology _does_ , and _how_. A question that's otherwise often very
frustratingly avoided.

Economics treats "technology" simply as a synonym for "efficiency" or some
"productivity multiplier".

There are both a theory of technology and a philosophy of technology, but
neither really addresses this point. (Both tend to focus far more on social
interactions and elements, which has been argued as a consequence of the more-
socially-oriented philosophers and theorists not being comfortable with the,
erm, _technical_ aspects of technology.

So, to the ontology.

Your basic tools are often largely power transmission and conversion systems.
"Simple machines" was much of what I had in mind in that category, though it
includes more: levers, wedges, ramps, screws, gears, pulleys. Rope (tension)
and stone (compression) both have transmission components. (Combine them, as a
fibre-composite material: adobe-straw bricks, fibreglass, carbon-fibre,
reinforced concrete, and you end up with a material with force-management
properties.)

It's not that I don't consider tools. It's that tools themselves are not
independent of the ontology, which concerns _mechanisms_ and _dynamics_. Tools
are not _dynamics_ , they are _implements embodying or achieving one or more
dynamics_. (I'd argue always _at least_ two: material and, typically, power
transmission _or_ measurement, though usually also process knowledge, possibly
others.)

Your simple tools -- hammers, saws, drills, planes, chisels, lathes, etc., are
largely specific devices for converting one form of power or motion to some
useful effect.

Electric devices are similar: generators convert motion to electricity, motors
convert electricity to motion. PV converts light to electricity, LEDs convert
electricity to light. Microphones convert audio energy to electrical signals,
speakers convert electrical energy to audio waves.

Then there are furnaces, smelters, ovens, kilns, etc., measurement and
monitoring tools. Maths if necessary to model your design. Etc., etc.

Most power transmission operates through thermal, kinetic, or electromagnetic
forces. There are some which might operate through strong or weak nuclear
force. Arguments could be made for chemistry as a mechanism, though that
decomposes to electromagnetic interactions.

(I belive it's Smil who describes hydraulic accumulators as an early-stage
technology and one which still substitutes for electricity in some
applications: dentist's offices, auto repair shops, Amish workshops, and
through liquid hydraulics in many heavy-lift applications. In the late 19th
century there'd been hydraulic distribution networks spanning kilometers in
industrial blocks and ports especially. For intermittent high loads they're
particularly well-suited.)

So: to build a steam engine, you'd need the raw materials, the know-how, power
transmission (rocker beam, flywheel, and gearwork, shaft or belt drives,
etc.), and yes, some earlier instances of technological mechanisms implemented
in materals suitable as tools: hammers, chisels, drills, lathes, grinders, and
the like.

As for the hygiene factors of a steam engine: you have issues with radiating
thermal energy, combustion gasses and ash, and the changes that any such
machine might have on business, economic, social, and environmental
considerations. All of those are emergent or unintended consequences, often
not immediately evident. Robert K. Merton's study of latent vs. manifest
functions has recently struck me as highly relevant and interesting. In
particular, his observation that as tools of understanding, latent functions
are far more significant than manifest ones _because they are not as
apparent_. This itself likely has further ... latent ... consequences.

On ignorant rulers as a governance mode: yes, effectively. I'd lump military
leadership, governance, business management, courts, ecclesiastical
organisation, industrial process controls, robotics, etc., as forms of
management. The essential elements are system, state, sensing, decision,
action, and feedback. Fundamentally: cybernetics.

There's a wonderful quote from the world of sailing:

"The Art of ship handling involves the effective use of forces under control
to overcome the effect of forces not under control."

\-- Charles H. Cotter

There's more to it than that, and the quote misses the elements of
observation, decision, and action (or implies but doesn't explicitly state
them). Still, I think it captures the essence of what I mean by "management".

On the resistances to technological innovations, I'd strongly recommend
Bernhard J. Stern's 1937 work of the same title:

[https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/pag...](https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/page/39)

Which I liked so much I retyped in Markdown, suitable for PDF or ePub via
Pandoc:

[https://pastebin.com/raw/Bapu75is](https://pastebin.com/raw/Bapu75is)

Stern, a sociologist, develops a theory of what drives this, which I think
you'll find interesting and applicable to recent examples you cite.

Dysfunctional as that response is, it _is_ part of the inherent, and I'd argue
default governance mode. Which like many other default modes of behaviour, has
to be modified or adapted if you wish to get past it.

------
aggie
> Its design shines a light on technical skills that researchers didn't think
> Neolithic people possessed.

It seems these kinds of discoveries -- people were more advanced at some point
in time than previously believed -- happen quite frequently. It makes me
realize I have a much too linear view of the development of technology and
civilization. There have been many stops and starts and backtracking along the
way, of course with plenty of uneven distribution across single points in time
as well.

~~~
radu_floricica
For example we were pretty close to the industrial revolution 2000 years ago.
It was easily at an 1800s level, before it collapsed.

~~~
fennecfoxen
No. The Romans never would have allowed an industrial revolution. They knew
all about aqueducts, but they didn't even bother using water power to mill
grain, because that would have undermined too many powerful people whose
economic might was backed by the slave economy.

The whole "Dark Ages were backwards after Rome collapsed" story overall is a
historical meme pushed by motivated reasoning and poorly backed by facts. Even
"collapse" is dubious. If Rome was really on the cusp of industrial
revolution, why didn't Byzantium bother to finish the job any time in the next
1,000 years?

~~~
usrusr
> but they didn't even bother using water power to mill grain

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbegal_aqueduct_and_mills](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbegal_aqueduct_and_mills)

Slave labor may have caused a massive employment problem for the lower tiers
of the non-slave population, but it sure did not cause Romans to skimp on
water powered grain mills.

------
incompatible
"cut in the autumn or winter 5259 B.C. or the winter of early 5258 B.C.," ...
"oldest dendrochronologically dated archaeological wooden construction".

This is an interesting technique, which isn't explained in the article. Tree
rings obviously stop forming when the tree is killed. However, the size of
individual rings various according to the weather in any particular year, so
by matching a sequence of trees of different ages you can build up a sequence
of ring widths. Then you can find the position of an unknown tree within this
sequence, accurate to the year.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Isn't dendrochronology prone to mismatches. Surely there's some variance in
growth rates and masses, even in the same region, and the chances of a false
match must get relatively high as you go back further. Like if your tree is at
the sunward end of the glade, the trees shading it are felled and it taps a
nearby ground water vein then surely it grows better that year and the growth
ring then won't match the rest of the trees there so closely.

What's a bit more incredible to me is that they have 7000 years of unbroken
samples of wood from that one area? I know you can corroborate with other
dating methods but the headline here is that this is pure dendro?

Also, with dendrochronology, surely we have to have other artefacts (wooden
pieces at least) that are dated only just later from the same area (ie planted
before these timbers were cut) -- be interesting to know what they are?

------
rafaelvasco
Most people think that ancient people , +5000 thousand years before Christ,
were all barbaric troglodytes, almost devoid of intelligence. Well, I used to
think that, as I learned that way in "school". Hope more and more discoveries
like this help to put an end to that misconception; I mean , it wasn't linear
at all. At the same time as one group of humans were totally undeveloped,
other groups were hundreds or even thousands of years ahead in advancement;
Some people even go as far as saying there were the atlanteans, lemurians etc,
which were far more advanced than we today. It could be true. Nothing
preventing it, but if they existed, they left almost no traces after
disappearing;

~~~
scardycat
I went to school in India and we were taught about major civilizations that
existed BC, including the Indus valley civilization, which was ~3000 BC.

Unfortunately, what we all learn is true to the facts but what the local
authorities is important. It is not surprising at all that some communities
that lean heavily in to religion may choose to say anything BC is Pagan,
uncultured, etc.

~~~
rafaelvasco
Yeah, I was watching a video about ancient Hindu civilization and I was
marveled. Such an amazingly rich culture and religion. In fact the video said
that Hindu religion, with it's vast literature, the Upanishads, the
Mahabharata with the Gita etc, is the mother of all religions and all
spiritual lore. After looking into it more, I completely agree;

------
craz8
I’m a big fan of the British TV show Time Team that is now on Amazon Prime
streaming

In earlier seasons, they often recreate some of the artifacts of the age they
are digging, and it’s fascinating to see some of that technology in action

~~~
lostlogin
It’s great. If you haven’t already stumbled on it, have a look for the tv
series on Must Farm too. It’s really incredible. I think much or all of it is
on YouTube. [http://www.mustfarm.com/bronze-age-
settlement/progress/archi...](http://www.mustfarm.com/bronze-age-
settlement/progress/archive/)

------
xixixao
Czech Republic is in Central Europe, not Eastern Europe.

Check wikipedia if you don’t believe me.

Otherwise awesome!

~~~
oska
Not to mention that it wasn't until the sixth paragraph before they even gave
this more specific detail about the well's location.

The journal article about this discovery [1] gets to the point right in the
first sentence:

> In 2018, during the construction of a motorway in the East Bohemian Region
> near the town of Ostrov (Czech Republic), archaeologists excavated a
> structure of a wooden water well lining with a square base area of 80 × 80
> cm and 140 cm in height.

[1]
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030544032...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440320300066?via%3Dihub)

When, what, where and how all addressed right from the start.

------
adamnemecek
Czech Republic is Central Europe. This is like saying that Kansas is West
Coast because it's west of Mississippi.

~~~
Shacklz
I've had a Polish friend once who insisted that she's from Central Europe - a
term that is basically unknown where I'm from (Switzerland), everything east
of Germany/Austria is considered "Eastern Europe".

I guess "Central Europe" is a term only used by people who consider themselves
"Central European", everyone else seems to only distinguish between east/west.

~~~
masklinn
"Central" europe is not a recent (or local) classification at all.

It's just that for about 50 years there was an overriding east/west
classification which overrode the old.

Historically, eastern europe was the areas where the orthodox church had
primacy (north of the black sea). Basically the european part of the Soviet
Union proper excluding the baltic states.

------
purplezooey
_digging_

Well well well... look what we've found

------
tomcam
> Researchers are developing a process to dry the wood and preserve it without
> deformation using sugar to reinforce the wood's cellular structure.

Now I have a reason for eating so much sugar

~~~
kleer001
nobody wants to hear about your ancient wood

