Katerina Harvati, researcher, on incredible 400,000-year-old discovery: “little known aspect of the technology of early humans”
An archaeological discovery of two artifacts in southern Greece are the oldest known handheld wooden tools fashioned by early human ancestors.
Anyone who has ever left their wooden tools outside knows that the elements will take a toll on them rather quickly. That’s why researchers are so excited about a discovery made in southern Greece, two wooden artifacts that are the oldest known handheld wooden tools fashioned by early human ancestors.
The two tools have been dated to come from around 430,000 years ago and provide “a very rare glimpse” into technology employed by early hominids. “What’s particularly exciting about finds like this is that we just so rarely have wood preserved for that long,” Annemieke Milks, a paleolithic archaeologist at the University of Reading in England and one of the authors of the study on the wooden tools, told NBC News.
Rare discovery expands knowledge of early humans’ tool kit
Study author and paleoanthropologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany Katerina Harvati told the Associated Press that the two wooden tools provide a “little known aspect of the technology of early humans.”
She added: “They not only push back the temporal timeframe of our knowledge on this technology and expand its geographic range, but also provide new information, in the form of a completely new type of tool, which we record here for the first time.”
One of the tools is a stick about two-and-a-half feet long believed to be a thin alder tree trunk. It had marks on it that showed work had been done with stone tools to remove branches. Analysis of wear caused by use indicates that it was a digging tool.
The purpose of the other is more unclear. It is thought that the nearly 3-inch piece of carved willow or poplar could have been used in conjunction with other stone or bone tools to work on other objects.
Ancient conditions prevented wood from rotting
The wooden tools were found in a lignite mine in the Megalopolis Basin in the center of the Peloponnese Peninsula. Their “exceptional” preservation was thanks to the conditions at the site when they were used.
In ancient times, the location was the shore of a now dried up lake. The heavily waterlogged ground allowed the objects to get rapidly buried deep in the wet sediment. Milks explained that this kept microorganisms away from the artifacts that would have otherwise caused them to rot. The two objects were found at a depth of nearly 100 feet.
Stone tools and elephant bones have also been found at the site, however, no human remains have yet been found. So researchers don’t know which early human ancestor, Neandertals or some other, was responsible for their creation.
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