Michael Button

Because a lot of people would claim to think, and the kind of consensus always is, that we didn't do that until 12,000 years ago.

We didn't settle down and form permanent communities until the Neolithic Revolution.

And I think that's one of the major...

paradigms, if you like, that we have regarding our past that simply doesn't make sense in light of new evidence.

Yeah, this is the Colombo structure, and this is something I talk about a lot in my videos because I think it's a crazy find, and I don't understand why it's not kicking up more of a fuss.

If I'm the guy that has to kick up the fuss about it, then I'll be that guy because...

Basically, the idea has always been that humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers that moved with the seasons and lived in caves or just kind of walked around for all of our history until the Neolithic Revolution, the invention of agriculture 12,000 years ago.

And no earlier than that did we ever settle down and live in permanent settlements.

But the Colombo structure was something they found a few years ago in modern-day Zambia.

And what it is is this...

These pieces of wood, and I'll get to the point about why this wood has survived in a minute, because obviously, you know, wood surviving this long is crazy.

But there you go.

Yeah.

So the Colombo structure is these pieces of wood that have been joined together deliberately, cut in notches and connected together, tapered and secured at right angles.

And they think it was either a kind of raised walkway, like a kind of raised platform or a house, a dwelling, a hut, some kind of structure.

And

Why this is so paradigm shifting is because not only does this kind of scream that humans potentially lived in permanent settlement.

Sorry, I haven't even said this.

This is 476,000 years old.

So this predates Homo sapiens.