Stick shaped by ancient humans is the oldest known wooden tool

 

Artist’s reconstruction of a Palaeolithic woman making a digging stick from an alder tree trunk. Image courtesy of G. Prieto; K. Harvati

Joel Kontinen

The oldest known wooden tools have been found in an opencast mine in Greece. They are 430,000 years old and were made by an unidentified species of ancient human – perhaps the ancestors of Neanderthals.

But the Neanderthals were the descendants of Adam and Eve, there is something wrong about the date of 430 000 years.

Prehistoric wooden artefacts are “very scarce”, says archaeologist Dirk Leder at the Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage in Hannover, Germany, who wasn’t involved in the study. “Every single find is welcome.”

Source:

Michael Marshall 2026 Stick shaped by ancient humans is the oldest known wooden tool | New Scientist 26 January