Tag: agriculture

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Archaeologists discover world’s oldest wooden structure

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Half a million years ago, earlier than was previously thought possible, humans were building structures made of wood, according to new research by a team from the University of Liverpool and Aberystwyth University.

The research, published in the journal Nature, reports on the excavation of well-preserved wood at the archaeological site of Kalambo Falls, Zambia, dating back at least 476,000 years and predating the evolution of our own species, Homo sapiens.

Expert analysis of stone tool cut-marks on the wood show that these early humans shaped and joined two large logs to make a structure, probably the foundation of a platform or part of a dwelling.

This is the earliest evidence from anywhere in the world of the deliberate crafting of logs to fit together. Until now, evidence for the human use of wood was limited to its use for making fire, digging sticks and spears.
Wood is rarely found in such ancient sites as it usually rots and disappears, but at Kalambo Falls permanently high water levels preserved the wood.

This discovery challenges the prevailing view that Stone Age humans were nomadic. At Kalambo Falls these humans not only had a perennial source of water, but the forest around them provided enough food to enable them to settle and make structures.

Professor Larry Barham, from the University of Liverpool’s Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, who leads the ‘Deep Roots of Humanity’ research project said:
This find has changed how I think about our early ancestors. Forget the label ‘Stone Age,’ look at what these people were doing: they made something new, and large, from wood. They used their intelligence, imagination, and skills to create something they’d never seen before, something that had never previously existed.

They transformed their surroundings to make life easier, even if it was only by making a platform to sit on by the river to do their daily chores. These folks were more like us than we thought.

The specialist dating of the finds was undertaken by experts at Aberystwyth University.

They used new luminescence dating techniques, which reveal the last time minerals in the sand surrounding the finds were exposed to sunlight, to determine their age.

Professor Geoff Duller from Aberystwyth University said:
At this great age, putting a date on finds is very challenging and we used luminescence dating to do this. These new dating methods have far reaching implications – allowing us to date much further back in time, to piece together sites that give us a glimpse into human evolution. The site at Kalambo Falls had been excavated back in the 1960s when similar pieces of wood were recovered, but they were unable to date them, so the true significance of the site was unclear until now.

The site of Kalambo Falls on the Kalambo River lies above a 235 metres (772 foot) waterfall on the border of Zambia with the Rukwa Region of Tanzania at the edge of Lake Tanganyika. The area is on a ‘tentative‘ list from UNESCO for becoming a World Heritage site because of its archaeological significance.


The wooden structure
Professor Duller added:
“Our research proves that this site is much older than previously thought, so its archaeological significance is now even greater. It adds more weight to the argument that it should be a United Nations World Heritage Site.”

This research forms part of the pioneering ‘Deep Roots of Humanity’ project, an investigation into how human technology developed in the Stone Age. The project is funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council and involved teams from Zambia’s National Heritage Conservation Commission, Livingstone Museum, Moto Moto Museum and the National Museum, Lusaka.

Professor Barham added:
“Kalambo Falls is an extraordinary site and a major heritage asset for Zambia. The Deep Roots team is looking forward to more exciting discoveries emerging from its waterlogged sands.”

This is the earliest evidence from anywhere in the world of the deliberate crafting of logs to fit together. Until now, evidence for the human use of wood was limited to its use for making fire, digging sticks and spears.
Wood is rarely found in such ancient sites as it usually rots and disappears, but at Kalambo Falls permanently high water levels preserved the wood.

This discovery challenges the prevailing view that Stone Age humans were nomadic. At Kalambo Falls these humans not only had a perennial source of water, but the forest around them provided enough food to enable them to settle and make structures.

Professor Larry Barham, from the University of Liverpool’s Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, who leads the ‘Deep Roots of Humanity’ research project said:
This find has changed how I think about our early ancestors. Forget the label ‘Stone Age,’ look at what these people were doing: they made something new, and large, from wood. They used their intelligence, imagination, and skills to create something they’d never seen before, something that had never previously existed.

They transformed their surroundings to make life easier, even if it was only by making a platform to sit on by the river to do their daily chores. These folks were more like us than we thought.

The specialist dating of the finds was undertaken by experts at Aberystwyth University.

They used new luminescence dating techniques, which reveal the last time minerals in the sand surrounding the finds were exposed to sunlight, to determine their age.

Professor Geoff Duller from Aberystwyth University said:
At this great age, putting a date on finds is very challenging and we used luminescence dating to do this. These new dating methods have far reaching implications – allowing us to date much further back in time, to piece together sites that give us a glimpse into human evolution. The site at Kalambo Falls had been excavated back in the 1960s when similar pieces of wood were recovered, but they were unable to date them, so the true significance of the site was unclear until now.

The site of Kalambo Falls on the Kalambo River lies above a 235 metres (772 foot) waterfall on the border of Zambia with the Rukwa Region of Tanzania at the edge of Lake Tanganyika. The area is on a ‘tentative‘ list from UNESCO for becoming a World Heritage site because of its archaeological significance.

The wooden structure
Professor Duller added:
“Our research proves that this site is much older than previously thought, so its archaeological significance is now even greater. It adds more weight to the argument that it should be a United Nations World Heritage Site.”


This research forms part of the pioneering ‘Deep Roots of Humanity’ project, an investigation into how human technology developed in the Stone Age. The project is funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council and involved teams from Zambia’s National Heritage Conservation Commission, Livingstone Museum, Moto Moto Museum and the National Museum, Lusaka.
Professor Barham added:

“Kalambo Falls is an extraordinary site and a major heritage asset for Zambia. The Deep Roots team is looking forward to more exciting discoveries emerging from its waterlogged sands.”

https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2023/09/20/archaeologists-discover-worlds-oldest-wooden-structure/

AR #108

Civilization from Before the Deluge
by Frank Joseph

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Could Floating Sea Farms Feed the World and Provide Freshwater by 2050?

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The sun and the sea – both abundant and free – are being harnessed in a unique project to create vertical sea farms floating on the ocean that can produce fresh water for drinking and agriculture. In what is believed to be a world first, researchers have designed a self-sustaining solar-driven system that evaporates seawater and recycles it into freshwater, growing crops without any human involvement.

It could help address looming global shortages of freshwater and food in the decades ahead, with the world’s population expected to reach 10 billion by 2050.

Professor Haolan Xu and Dr Gary Owens from University of South Australia Future Industries Institute have developed the vertical floating sea farm which is made up of two chambers: an upper layer similar to a glasshouse and a lower water harvest chamber.

“The system works much like a wicking bed that household gardeners might be familiar with,” Dr Owen says.
“However, in this case, clean water is supplied by an array of solar evaporators that soak up the seawater, trap the salts in the evaporator body and, under the sun’s rays, release clean water vapour into the air which is then condensed on water belts and transferred to the upper plant growth chamber.”

In a field test, the researchers grew three common vegetable crops – broccoli, lettuce, and pak choi – on seawater surfaces without maintenance or additional clean water irrigation.

The system, which is powered only by solar light, has several advantages over other solar sea farm designs currently being trialled, according to Professor Xu.

 “Other designs have installed evaporators inside the growth chamber which takes up valuable space that could otherwise be used for plant growth. Also, these systems are prone to overheating and crop death,” Professor Xu says.
Floating farms, where traditional photovoltaic panels harvest electricity to power conventional desalination units, have also been proposed but these are energy intensive and costly to maintain.

“In our design, the vertical distribution of evaporator and growth chambers decreases the device’s overall footprint, maximising the area for food production. It is fully automated, low cost, and extremely easy to operate, using only solar energy and seawater to produce clean water and grow crops.”

Dr Owens says their design is only proof-of-concept at this stage, but the next step is to scale it up, using a small array of individual devices to increase plant production. Meeting larger food supply needs will mean increasing both the size and number of devices.

“It is not inconceivable that sometime in the future, you might see huge farm biodomes floating on the ocean, or multiple smaller devices deployed over a large sea area.”

The design experiment is published in the Chemical Engineering Journal (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1385894723041839).

It could help address looming global shortages of freshwater and food in the decades ahead, with the world’s population expected to reach 10 billion by 2050.

Professor Haolan Xu and Dr Gary Owens from University of South Australia Future Industries Institute have developed the vertical floating sea farm which is made up of two chambers: an upper layer similar to a glasshouse and a lower water harvest chamber.

“The system works much like a wicking bed that household gardeners might be familiar with,” Dr Owen says.
“However, in this case, clean water is supplied by an array of solar evaporators that soak up the seawater, trap the salts in the evaporator body and, under the sun’s rays, release clean water vapour into the air which is then condensed on water belts and transferred to the upper plant growth chamber.”

In a field test, the researchers grew three common vegetable crops – broccoli, lettuce, and pak choi – on seawater surfaces without maintenance or additional clean water irrigation.

The system, which is powered only by solar light, has several advantages over other solar sea farm designs currently being trialled, according to Professor Xu.

 “Other designs have installed evaporators inside the growth chamber which takes up valuable space that could otherwise be used for plant growth. Also, these systems are prone to overheating and crop death,” Professor Xu says.
Floating farms, where traditional photovoltaic panels harvest electricity to power conventional desalination units, have also been proposed but these are energy intensive and costly to maintain.

“In our design, the vertical distribution of evaporator and growth chambers decreases the device’s overall footprint, maximising the area for food production. It is fully automated, low cost, and extremely easy to operate, using only solar energy and seawater to produce clean water and grow crops.”

Dr Owens says their design is only proof-of-concept at this stage, but the next step is to scale it up, using a small array of individual devices to increase plant production. Meeting larger food supply needs will mean increasing both the size and number of devices.

“It is not inconceivable that sometime in the future, you might see huge farm biodomes floating on the ocean, or multiple smaller devices deployed over a large sea area.”

The design experiment is published in the Chemical Engineering Journal (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1385894723041839).

AR #123

What Does Water Remember”

by Jeane Manning

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Honey, the Secret of Brain-Like Computer Chips?

By Sara Zaske, Washington State University

Honey might be a sweet solution for developing environmentally friendly components for neuromorphic computers, systems designed to mimic the neurons and synapses found in the human brain.


Hailed by some as the future of computing, neuromorphic systems are much faster and use much less power than traditional computers. Washington State University engineers have demonstrated one way to make them more organic too. In a study published in Journal of Physics D, the researchers show that honey can be used to make a memristor, a component similar to a transistor that can not only process but also store data in memory.


“This is a very small device with a simple structure, but it has very similar functionalities to a human neuron,” said Feng Zhao, associate professor of WSU’s School of Engineering and Computer Science and corresponding author on the study.“ This means if we can integrate millions or billions of these honey memristors together, then they can be made into a neuromorphic system that functions much like a human brain.”


For the study, Zhao and first author Brandon Sueoka, a WSU graduate student in Zhao’s lab, created memristors by processing honey into a solid form and sandwiching it between two metal electrodes, making a structure similar to a human synapse. They then tested the honey memristors’ ability to mimic the work of synapses with high switching on and off speeds of 100 and 500 nanoseconds respectively. The memristors also emulated the synapse functions known as spike-timing dependent plasticity and spike-rate dependent plasticity, which are responsible for learning processes in human brains and retaining new information in neurons.


The WSU engineers created the honey memristors on a micro-scale, so they are about the size of a human hair. The research team led by Zhao plans to develop them on a nanoscale, about 1/1000 of a human hair, and bundle many millions or even billions together to make a full neuromorphic computing system.


Currently, conventional computer systems are based on what’s called the von Neumann architecture. Named after its creator, this architecture involves an input, usually from a keyboard and mouse, and an output, such as the monitor. It also has a CPU, or central processing unit, and RAM, or memory storage. Transferring data through all these mechanisms from input to processing to memory to output takes a lot of power at least compared to the human brain, Zhao said. For instance, the Fugaku supercomputer uses upwards of 28 megawatts, roughly equivalent to 28 million watts, to run while the brain uses only around 10 to 20 watts.


The human brain has more than 100 billion neurons with more than 1,000 trillion synapses, or connections, among them. Each neuron can both process and store data, which makes the brain much more efficient than a traditional computer, and developers of neuromorphic computing systems aim to mimic that structure.

AR #78, “Lost Tradition of the Sacred Bee,”

by Andrew Gough