For decades, a strangely shaped log buried beneath Zambia’s Kalambo Falls sat at the edge of an archaeological mystery. When archaeologist J. Desmond Clark uncovered it in the 1950s, the timber had tapered ends and a deliberate-looking notch cut into its surface, suggesting that someone had shaped it rather than leaving it to the river. But Clark had no reliable way to establish how far back it belonged. Radiocarbon dating could not reach remotely far enough, while an early uranium-series estimate produced an uncertain age. More than half a century later, archaeologists returned to the site and found additional pieces of timber with matching cut marks.
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