An international research team has identified the earliest known hand-held wooden tools used by humans, dating back around 430,000 years. The discovery comes from the Marathousa 1 archaeological site in central Greece’s Peloponnese and is described in a study published in PNAS, jointly led by Professor Katerina Harvati of the University of Tübingen and Dr. Annemieke Milks of the University of Reading.
The findings include two deliberately shaped wooden objects—one made from alder and the other from willow or poplar—representing the oldest hand-held wooden tools ever discovered. This pushes back evidence of such tool use by at least 40,000 years, significantly expanding understanding of early human technology.
The site, which was once located along the shore of a lake, also yielded stone tools and the remains of an elephant and other animals, suggesting it served as a butchering location. Early humans occupied the area during the Middle Pleistocene period, a crucial phase in human evolution marked by increasingly complex behaviors.
“The Middle Pleistocene was a critical phase in human evolution, during which more complex behaviors developed,” said Professor Harvati. “The earliest reliable evidence of targeted technological use of plants also dates from this period.”
The discovery highlights the importance of perishable materials like wood—rarely preserved in the archaeological record—in shaping early human survival strategies and technological innovation.
The functional end of 940/673-39, View 3. The pink highlighted area shows where the wood fibers show micro-damage, likely from use.
Worked stone tools and bone artifacts from the site had already demonstrated the technical skill and wide range of activities practiced by the people who once lived there, prompting researchers to examine the associated wooden finds more closely.
“Unlike stone, wooden objects require very specific conditions to survive over long periods of time,” explained Dr. Annemieke Milks, a leading specialist in early wooden tools. “We carefully examined all wooden remains under microscopes and identified chopping and carving marks on two objects—clear evidence that they had been deliberately shaped by early humans.”
Meticulous examination
The research team identified two wooden artifacts that showed unmistakable signs of human modification. One was a small piece of alder trunk bearing clear shaping marks as well as wear traces, suggesting it may have been used for digging along the lake’s edge or for stripping bark from trees.
The second artifact, a very small fragment made from willow or poplar, also showed signs of deliberate working and possible use. A third find—a larger piece of alder wood marked with a grooved pattern—was initially considered a potential tool, but closer analysis revealed that the marks were likely caused by the claws of a large carnivore, possibly a bear, rather than by human activity.
Together, the findings highlight both the sophistication of early human tool-making and the importance of rare wooden artifacts in reconstructing ancient behavior.
