Combinatorial technology and the emergence of the built environment

This talk provides a deep time perspective for assessing the behavioural implications of the creation of the earliest known structure and the technologies used in its making. Fossil and genetic evidence place the split between the last common ancestor of apes and humans ~7 million years ago, and the archaeological record begins 3.3 million years ago. In this broad context, the evidence for the earliest structure appears relatively late, about 500,000 years ago (in Zambia, Barham et al. 2023), and before the evolution of Homo sapiens. The next oldest structures were made by Neanderthals in Europe, 176,000 years ago deep in a cave at Bruniquel, France.

The site of Kalambo Falls, Zambia preserves rare evidence for the shaping and fitting together of two tree trunks to make a stable framework. The process of combining parts to make a whole reflects a conceptually new approach to technology, one which remains central to everything we make as humans, including structures (Barham 2013). This new additive approach contrasts with the long archaeological record of making tools by reduction. Did the invention of combinatorial technology require the use of language to discuss and evaluate diverse ways to form new constructs and constructions? This question arises from the extended planning and expertise needed in the making of combinatorial tools.