Discover the oldest wooden tools used by humans

Scientists announced the discovery of the oldest known wooden hand tools, dating back around 430,000 years. These objects, found at an archaeological site near an ancient lake in Greece, demonstrate that early humans exhibited much greater skill and ingenuity than previously thought.

The discovery was made at the Marathousa 1 site, located in the Peloponnese region of central Greece. An international team led by researchers from the University of Reading, the University of Tübingen, and the Senckenberg Research Society identified two carefully crafted wooden pieces.

One of the tools was made from alder wood, while the other came from willow or poplar. The researchers indicate that this finding pushes back the evidence of this type of technological use of wood by at least 40,000 years.

Signs of Use and Manufacture

The site also yielded stone tools and remains of elephants and other animals, suggesting that the area served for processing prey near the shore of an ancient lake. Humans occupied this area during the Middle Pleistocene, a key period in human evolution.

"The Middle Pleistocene was a critical phase in human evolution, where more complex behaviors developed," noted Professor Katerina Harvati, a paleoanthropologist leading the research program at Marathousa 1. This stage also marks the first reliable evidence of directed technological use of plants.

The researchers carefully examined preserved wood remains during the excavations. Unlike stones, wood requires special conditions to be preserved for hundreds of thousands of years. Under the microscope, they detected cutting and carving marks on two objects, clear signs of human intervention.

One of the artifacts was a piece of alder branch or trunk with shaping marks and signs of wear from use. It could have been used for digging in soft ground near the lake shore or for stripping bark from trees.

A Dangerous Environment

The second artifact was a smaller piece of willow or poplar wood, which also showed evidence of carving and possible use by humans. Not all marks on the wood came from human activity: a larger fragment exhibited grooves that, after detailed analysis, were attributed to a large carnivore, possibly a bear.

This detail highlights the risky environment in which these human groups lived, with fierce competition for resources. The presence of large carnivores near processed elephants indicates strong rivalry with humans.

The oldest known wooden tools to date have come from sites in the United Kingdom, Zambia, Germany, and China, and include weapons, digging sticks, and tool handles. However, all are more recent than the findings from Marathousa 1.

There is only one earlier piece of evidence of wood used by humans, from Kalambo Falls in Zambia, dating back about 476,000 years, but it was structural material and not a tool.

"We have discovered the oldest known wooden tools to date, as well as the first evidence of this type in southeastern Europe," emphasized Harvati. The Marathousa 1 site offers exceptional preservation conditions.

The international team included scientists from various Greek institutions and was funded by the European Research Council and the German Research Foundation. This discovery sheds new light on the technological capabilities of our distant ancestors during a fundamental time in human evolution.