section_path: History
section_name: History
paragraph_text: History
  
  A 2011 discovery in the Canadian province of New Brunswick yielded the earliest known plants to have grown wood, approximately 395 to 400 million years ago.
  
  Wood can be dated by carbon dating and in some species by dendrochronology to determine when a wooden object was created.
  
  People have used wood for thousands of years for many purposes, including as a fuel or as a construction material for making houses, tools, weapons, furniture, packaging, artworks, and paper. Known constructions using wood date back ten thousand years. Buildings like the longhouses in Neolithic Europe were made primarily of wood.
  
  Recent use of wood has been enhanced by the addition of steel and bronze into construction.
  
  The year-to-year variation in tree-ring widths and isotopic abundances gives clues to the prevailing climate at the time a tree was cut.