This is a really cool and interesting story. It’s not just that it’s old, but that the cutting, shaping and fitting of the wood was wonderful and precise. Indeed, the workers who made this structure would be just as comfortable making complex and detailed traditional wood homes in Japan as they would furniture and furnishings. Ok, in other words, this was no “log house”. The construction details show absolute precision. And it was all made with stone or bronze tools. All in all, it’s pretty darn amazing.

So…

Instead of thinking that Bronze Age man lived inside of crude stockades and rudimentary shelters, we need to revise our understanding of these people. We need to recognize that they had a degree of skill and appreciation of tools that we were absolutely unaware of.

Here’s a recreation of a wood stockade fort around one hundred years ago in America. It was used to defend against the American Indians who greatly resented settlers coming on to their land, taking their crops, burning their homes and raping and killing their people. Note how the logs are laid and the mere functionality of the arrangement…

And thus…

That is how we all think that the more primitive and ancient humans lived. We have associated them with the crude constructions that we see in our American History books. We associate them with “savages” and crude behaviors.

But, of course, that is not really true.

We know that wonder artistic furniture, homes and structures were the norm throughout history. What we were unaware of was just how long ago they came into being. For according to this structure, around 10,000 years ago our ancestors were building wooden structures like this…

All in all, I think that it is all darn cool, and super interesting.

The following is a reprint of an article titled” Oldest Known Wooden Structure ” By JDZ found at the Neveryetmelted site HERE. It is reprinted as found with very little editing. All credit to the author.

Oldest Known Wooden Structure

The old well doesn’t look like much – a wooden crate-like object, dilapidated, crumbling a little. But according to new research, it’s really special. A tree-ring dating technique has revealed that the oak wood used to make it was cut around 7,275 years ago.

This makes it the oldest known wooden structure in the world that’s been confirmed using this method, scientists say.

“According to our findings, based particularly on dendrochronological  data, we can say that the tree trunks for the wood used were felled in  the years 5255 and 5256 BCE,” 

…explained archaeologist Jaroslav Peška of the Archaeological Centre Olomouc in the Czech Republic in a press statement last year.

“The rings on the trunks enable us to give a precise estimate, give [or] take one year, as to when the trees were felled.”

The well was unearthed and discovered near the town of Ostrov in 2018 during construction on the D35 motorway in the Czech Republic. Ceramic fragments found inside the well dated the site to the early Neolithic, but no evidence of any settlement structures were found nearby, suggesting the well serviced several settlements at a bit of a distance away.

It was filled with dirt, so an archaeological team carefully excavated and extracted it. It consisted of four oak poles, one at each corner, with flat planks between them. The well was roughly square, measuring 80 by 80 centimetres (2.62 feet). It stood 140 centimetres tall (4.6 feet), with a shaft that extended below ground level and into the groundwater.

Even in waterlogged conditions, the state of preservation of the wood was exceptional, showing marks from the polished stone tools used to shape each piece.

“The construction of this well is unique,” 

Peška said.

“It bears marks of construction techniques used in the Bronze and  Iron ages and even the Roman Age. We had no idea that the first farmers,  who only had tools made of stone, bones, horns, or wood, were able to  process the surface of felled trunks with such precision.”

And that amazing state of preservation also allowed for dendrochronological (based on tree rings) and radiocarbon dating, based on radioactive isotopes of carbon.

According to these techniques, the trees that supplied wood to the flat planks on the sides of the well were felled around 7,275 years ago. That’s probably when the well was constructed. But two of the poles told a different story.

Both were felled earlier – one around 7,278 or 7,279 years ago; and the other around nine years before that. This, the researchers concluded, meant that the two posts must have been used previously, and repurposed into posts for the well.

One of the side planks also had a different age. It was quite a bit younger, felled between 7,261 and 7,244 years ago. This is likely because of a repair to the well at some point.

Conclusion

I suppose this wouldn’t matter to most folk. If you want a couch or a chair, you go to a store and you buy it. Little thought goes into the effort and talent in making the furniture. And with today’s mass produced products, and electric power tools, it seems and appears so very easy.

Uh. um.

Well, it’s not. You need to really understand and have a real feel for the wood that you are working with. Or else it will all come out wrong.

And that is one of the things that we seem to take for granted.

That everything seems so easy…

You are hungry, so you go hop in your truck and go through a drive through and in five minutes you have a piping hot burger with fries and a Coke.

You need a new mailbox, you hop in the truck and go to Big Lots and pick one out of a multitude of others.

You want a dormer installed on your roof, you buy a kit, and it is all pre-cut and packaged and you just bolt the entire thing together and boom! It’s all done. Fast, quick and easy.

Jimmie Crickets!

I shudder to think that would happen to civilization if we cannot build or construct things with manual labor, simple hand tools, and a complete dearth of time-saving conveniences. And maybe…

…you should too.

Or this…

Do you want more?

I have more posts along this line in my Happiness Index here…

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