Recently the New York Times reported the following:
430,000-Year-Old Wooden Tools Are the Oldest Ever Found
The finding, along with the discovery of a
500,000-year-old hammer made of bone, indicates that our human ancestors were
making tools even earlier than archaeologists thought.
The NYT - By Franz Lidz
Jan. 26, 2026
Early hominins in Europe were creating tools from raw
materials hundreds of thousands of years before Homo sapiens arrived there, two
new studies indicate, pushing back the established time for such activity. The
evidence includes a 500,000-year-old hammer made of elephant or mammoth bone,
excavated in southern England, and 430,000-year-old wooden tools found in
southern Greece — the earliest wooden tools on record.
The findings suggest that early humans possessed sophisticated technological skills, the researchers said. Katerina Harvati, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany and a lead author of the wooden-tool paper, which was published on Monday in the journal PNAS, said the discoveries provided insight into the prehistoric origins of human intelligence.
Silvia Bello, a paleoanthropologist at London’s Natural History Museum and an author on the elephant-bone study, which was published last week in Science Advances, concurred.
The artifacts in both studies, recovered from coal-mine sites, were probably produced by early Neanderthals or a preceding species, Homo heidelbergensis. Homo sapiens emerged in Africa more than 300,000 years ago, and the oldest evidence of them in Europe is a 210,000-year-old fossil unearthed in Greece. By the time Homo sapiens established themselves in Britain 40,000 years ago, other hominins had already lived there for nearly a million years.
Sticks and stones
Because archaeology is in a perpetual state of rewriting its
own history, the oldest record of any development is often temporary. The
oldest known evidence of early humans intentionally crafting wood for
structural purposes was found in 2019 at Kalambo Falls in Zambia and dates back
476,000 years. It consists of two carved, interlocking bushwillow logs that
seem to have formed part of a dwelling or platform. “Organic artifacts,
especially those derived from plants, are a lot more fragile and harder to find
than those made from stone,” Dr. Havarti said.
The relics in the new wooden-tools paper were excavated from a deep layer at the Marathousa 1 site, a former lakeshore mine in the Megalopolis basin in Greece. They date back to the Middle Pleistocene age, which lasted from roughly 478,000 to 424,000 years ago. At the site, archaeologists discovered the partial skeleton of a straight-tusked elephant; the remains of turtles, birds, rodents and hippopotamuses; and stone tools used for butchering. Among the dozens of wood fragments embedded in the debris, two — a worked alder shard for digging and a carved poplar or willow twig — had been used as tools.
“We found marks from chopping and carving on both objects, clear signs that humans had shaped them,” said Annemieke Milks, an archaeologist at the University of Reading in England and a lead author of the study, who conducted microscopic analysis and CT scans of the items.
The digging stick was found among the elephant bones. Might it have been used to chop and carve meat from the carrion?
“I’ve never tried to cut up an elephant carcass, so I don’t know,” Dr. Havarti said. “I assume it’s not so easy, but I mean, I guess it’s possible.”
Elephantine tools
There is no older or more comprehensive assemblage of
carved, sharpened elephant-bone tools than the collection uncovered over the
last decade in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, which dates back 1.5 million
years. Previously, European elephant-bone tools were thought to be limited to
the warmer south and to have appeared within the last 450,000 years. But a
hammer made of elephant or mammoth bone, discovered at the Boxgrove site in
West Sussex in England during the 1990s and only recently identified, overturns
that assumption.
The setting is rich in flint, bone and antler fossils, but this was the first tool of elephantine bone discovered there. Deformities on its surface indicate that it was created and used while fresh, leaving researchers to speculate on whether the ancient elephant was hunted or scavenged.
Dr. Bello said the tool, four inches long and triangular, was used for knapping, the process of breaking off flakes from a stone to create tools like hand axes. Researchers found distinctive notches and marks on the bone fragment. “The hammer has been struck against stone, repeatedly,” Dr. Bello said. “The small pieces of flint found embedded in the bone confirm that it was used for this specialized purpose.”
Citing the maxim that an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, Dr. Bello suggested that the apparent scarcity of early tools resulted from poor preservation or difficulties in identification. Thomas Terberger, an expert in ancient artifact analysis at the Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage in Hannover, Germany, agreed. “Further proof may be found in as-yet undiscovered sites or existing museum collections,” he said.
Dr. Terberger noted that the new studies highlighted the diversity of raw materials that prehistoric people used for toolmaking. “Flint was more common, but bone and wood were probably more valuable for our ancient ancestors,” he said. “Imagine how many tools you can make from a single large bone of an elephant.”
Translation
43萬年前的木製工具是迄今為止發現的最古老工具
這項發現，連同先前發現的一把50萬年前的骨錘，顯示我們人類的祖先製造工具的時間比考古學家之前認為的還要早。
兩項新的研究表明，歐洲早期人類在智人到達歐洲之前數十萬年就已經開始利用原材料製造工具，這推翻了先前關於早期人類製造工具活動的既定時間。證據包括在英格蘭南部出土的一把50萬年前的象骨或猛獁象骨錘，以及在希臘南部發現的43萬年前的木製工具 - 這是迄今為止記錄在案的最早的木製工具。
研究人員表示，這些發現顯示早期人類擁有精湛的技術。德國圖賓根大學的古人類學家Katerina Harvati是在星期一在《美國國家科學院院刊》（PNAS）發的木製工具論文的主要作者之一。她表示，這些發現為了解人類智力的史前起源提供了新的視角。
倫敦自然史博物館的古人類學家Silvia Bello也同意這一點。她也是上週發表在《科學進展》（Science Advances）上的象骨研究的作者之一。
這兩項研究中的文物均出土於煤礦遺址，很可能是由早期尼安德特人或其更早的物種－海德堡人（Homo
heidelbergensis）製造的。智人（Homo
sapiens）於30多萬年前在非洲出現，而歐洲最古老的智人證據是一塊在希臘出土的、距今21萬年的化石。當智人在4萬年前定居英國時，其他人屬物種已經在那裡生活了近百萬年。
木棍與石頭
由於考古學處於不斷改寫自身歷史的狀態，任何發展最古老的記錄往往都是暫時的。已知最早的人類有意製作木材用於建築用途的證據於2019年在Zambia的Kalambo瀑布被發現，距今已有47.
6萬年歷史。它由兩根雕刻過的、交錯的柳條組成，似乎曾經是住所或平台的一部分。Havarti博士說: 「有機物，尤其是植物製品，比石製品脆弱得多和更難找到」。
這篇關於木製工具的新論文中的文物是從希臘Megalopolis盆地Marathousa
1號遺址的深層地層中挖掘出來的，該遺址曾是一處湖岸礦場。這些文物可以追溯到中更新世時期，大約從47.8萬年前到42.4萬年前。在遺址中，考古學家發現了部分直齒象的骨骼；龜、鳥、囓齒動物和河馬的遺骸；以及用於屠宰的石器。在散落在廢墟中的數十塊木片中，有兩塊曾被用作工具 - 一塊是用於挖掘的加工過的榿木碎片，另一塊是雕刻過的白楊或柳樹枝。
英國雷丁大學的考古學家Annemieke Milks說:「我們在這兩件物品上都發現了砍伐和雕刻的痕跡，這清楚地表明它們曾被人類加工過」。她是這項研究的主要作者之一，負責對這些物品進行顯微分析和CT掃描。
挖掘棒是在象骨堆中發現的。它是否曾被用來從死肉上剁肉剔骨？
Havarti博士說: 「我從未嘗試過切割象屍，所以我不清楚」; 「我猜這並不容易，但我的意思是，我想這並非不可能」。
象骨工具
該遺址富含燧石、骨骼和鹿角化石，但這件象骨錘是首次在此發現。錘體表面的變形表明它是在新鮮狀態下製成和使用的，這讓研究人員不禁推測，這頭古代大像是被獵殺還是被拾荒得來的。
Bello博士說，這件長約四吋、呈三角形的工具用於分割敲打，也就是從石頭上敲下薄片來製作手斧等工具的過程。研究人員在骨片上發現了獨特的凹槽和痕跡。Bello博士說: “這把錘子曾反覆敲擊石頭” ， “骨頭裡嵌著的小塊燧石證實了它曾被用於這種特殊用途。”
Bello博士引用「沒有證據並不代表不存在」的格言，認為早期工具的稀少可能是由於保存狀況不佳或鑑定困難造成的。德國漢諾威Lower Saxony State文化遺產辦公室的古代文物分析專家Thomas Terberger對此表示贊同。他說： “或許在尚未發現的遺址，或在現有的博物館藏品中可能找到更多證據。”
Terberger 博士指出，這些新研究凸顯了史前人類用於製造工具的原料的多樣性。 他說:「燧石雖然比較常見，但骨頭和木頭對我們的古代祖先來說可能更有價值」; 「想想看，用一根巨大的象骨可以製作出多少種工具啊！」。
So, early hominins in Europe were creating
tools from raw materials hundreds of thousands of years before Homo sapiens
arrived there. The new evidence includes a 500,000-year-old hammer made of
elephant or mammoth bone, excavated in southern England, and 430,000-year-old
wooden tools found in southern Greece. These findings suggest that early humans
possessed sophisticated technological skills. Probably,
further proof may be found in
as-yet undiscovered sites or existing museum collections. Apparently, this is a
great story in understanding our pre-modern history.
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