Oldest Wooden Tool May Be a 430,000-Year-Old “Stick” Found in Greece

The Stone Age is a misnomer.

In the shadow of a coal mine in southern Greece, archaeologists discovered the oldest known handheld wooden tools ever found. Dating back 430,000 years, these artifacts push the timeline for this type of tool use back by a staggering 40,000 years.

We often imagine our ancient ancestors as exclusively stone-tool-wielding hominins — hence, the “Stone Age.” However, this narrative is heavily biased by what survives the ravages of time. Stone is virtually indestructible; wood is not.

Yet, as this new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows, wood may have been just as crucial to our extinct relatives. “It might be the oldest type of tool that anybody used,” Katerina Harvati at the University of Tübingen in Germany, told New Scientist.

A Lakeshore Refuge in a Glacial World

The tools were discovered at Marathousa 1, a site in the Megalopolis basin first identified in 2013. Here, an opencast lignite mine exposed layers of sediment holding secrets nearly a million years old. “It allows us to access time periods and sediments that would otherwise have been buried,” says Harvati.

Between 2013 and 2019, excavations revealed a fascinating scene. Researchers found the near-complete skeleton of a straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) bearing butchery marks. It lay alongside the remains of hippopotamuses, turtles, birds, and more than 2,000 stone tools. This diverse menagerie indicates the site was once a rich lakeshore environment.

Life 430,000 years ago was harsh. Europe was gripped by an extremely cold glacial period. “It’s one of the worst glacial episodes in Pleistocene Europe,” says Harvati. But the Megalopolis basin likely acted as a microrefugium, a localized haven offering a milder climate and essential resources for survival.

The Mystery of the Digging Stick

Out of 144 preserved wood pieces, researchers identified two definitive tools. The most striking is an 81-centimeter-long stick crafted from an alder trunk.

“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 and a lead author of the study.

×

Get smarter every day...

Stay ahead with ZME Science and subscribe.

Daily Newsletter
The science you need to know, every weekday.

Weekly Newsletter
A week in science, all in one place. Sends every Sunday.
No spam, ever. Unsubscribe anytime. Review our Privacy Policy.

Thank you! One more thing...

Please check your inbox and confirm your subscription.

The alder stick features a rounded end that likely served as a handle and a flattened end showing signs of fraying and splintering.

“The tool has a morphology and size comparable to digging sticks,” the research team wrote in their study. This suggests hominins may have used it to unearth underground tubers for food. Intriguingly, the stick was found nestled among the butchered elephant bones. Could it have been used to process the giant carcass?

“I don’t really know what they were doing with it,” Harvati told the New York Times. “I’ve never tried to cut up an elephant carcass, so I don’t know,” she adds. “I assume it’s not so easy, but I mean, I guess it’s possible.”

The second artifact is a mystery. It is a tiny piece of willow or poplar, measuring just 5.7 centimeters long. “This is a completely new type of wooden tool,” says Harvati. It has been completely debarked and shaped, with rounding and pitting at one end. It might have been a specialized tool used for retouching the edges of stone flakes, but its exact function remains an open question.

“We don’t really know what it was for,” Harvati admits.

Who Made the Tools?

No hominin fossils were found at Marathousa 1, leaving the identity of the toolmakers unknown. The 430,000-year date puts the site well before the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe, which occurred much later.

RelatedPosts

Neanderthals were artists just like humans, and even understood symbolism
Neanderthals Weren’t Just Meat-Eating Brutes. They Cooked, Foraged, Fished — and Maybe Even Self-Medicated
Advanced 77,000-year-old Stone Age weapons found in South Africa
Engraved Crimean flint could point to Neanderthal symbolism

“A first hypothesis is that what we have here is a type of pre-Neanderthal, or Homo heidelbergensis,” says Harvati. However, she cautions against jumping to conclusions, noting that Greece was a crossroads for many hominin groups.

“It could have been Homo heidelbergensis, or possibly very early Neanderthals,” Milks added.

Regardless of the species, the findings showcase remarkable adaptability. These hominins survived a brutal ice age by utilizing everything their environment offered. They “highlight the behavioral adaptability and flexibility of the Marathousa hominins,” Harvati notes.

Wood, Bone, and the Bias of Stone

The Marathousa 1 discoveries join a growing body of evidence suggesting that early human technology was far richer than stone tools alone. “Organic artifacts, especially those derived from plants, are a lot more fragile and harder to find than those made from stone,” Havarti said.

A third wooden specimen from the site, a large alder trunk, bears deep grooves that researchers identified not as human tool marks, but as claw marks from a large carnivore, possibly a bear. “And the fact that large carnivores left their mark near the butchered elephant alongside human activity indicates fierce competition between the two,” Harvati says.

Recent research from Boxgrove in England also revealed a 500,000-year-old hammer made from an elephant bone. Silvia Bello, a paleoanthropologist at London’s Natural History Museum, explains that “The hammer has been struck against stone, repeatedly. The small pieces of flint found embedded in the bone confirm that it was used for this specialized purpose,” she told the New York Times.

While the 430,000-year-old Marathousa tools are the oldest handheld wooden tools, they are not the oldest evidence of woodcraft. That title belongs to the Kalambo Falls site in Zambia, where 476,000-year-old interlocking logs were found, likely forming part of a shelter or platform.

But handheld tools like digging sticks or stone-retouchers require different cognitive processes than building structures. They show an intimate, portable engagement with the natural world. “I think it really helps us understand how humans in the deep past were making use of so many different materials and resources in their surroundings,” Milks said.

Prehistoric wooden artifacts are “very scarce,” says Dirk Leder at the Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage. “Every single find is welcome.”

As we continue to dig into waterlogged sites that preserve these perishable materials, we may find that the “Stone Age” is a misnomer. Our ancestors were master craftspeople of the forest, just as much as the quarry.

This article originally appeared in February 2026.