this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2026
146 points (97.4% liked)

Archaeology

4635 readers
18 users here now

Welcome to c/Archaeology @ Mander.xyz!

Shovelbums welcome. ๐Ÿ—ฟ


Notice Board

This is a work in progress, please don't mind the mess.


About

Archaeology or archeology[a] is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes.

Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.

The discipline involves surveying, excavation, and eventually analysis of data collected, to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Read more...

Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Be kind and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. No pseudoscience/pseudoarchaeology.



Links

Archaeology 101:

Get Involved:

University and Field Work:

Jobs and Career:

Professional Organisations:

FOSS Tools:

Datasets:

Fun:

Other Resources:



Similar Communities


Sister Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Plants & Gardening

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Memes


Find us on Reddit

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] cryptTurtle@piefed.social 33 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Wiki has a breakdown of the debate and how it's evolved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites

Neat stuff

[โ€“] calliope@retrolemmy.com 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

This has absolutely blown my mind!

This looks exactly like the kind of whose ancestors would, over millions of years, eventually mutate to become a tree.

The polished fossil in the Wikipedia article looks a shocking amount like wood!

there were "trees" before actual trees evolved. in the carbiniferous, mostly from lycophytes,

[โ€“] Naz@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

Dude; I think you're absolutely correct.

It looks like a proto-tree

Also: Trees aren't a uniform genus, but this goes to show, on any planet that has photosynthesis, trees will eventually evolve spontaneously

[โ€“] Phoenix3875@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

One of the linked papers thinks it's actually horizontal rather vertical, as people have guessed originally.