Overview
- The PNAS study dates two handheld wooden implements from the Peloponnese to roughly 430,000 years.
- Microscopy shows deliberate shaping and use-wear on an alder piece resembling a digging stick and on a smaller willow or poplar tool.
- The finds were recovered alongside stone flakes, worked bone and butchered elephant remains at a lakeshore site.
- A third wooden fragment carries grooves attributed to a large carnivore, pointing to shared use of the landscape by predators and hominins.
- The discovery pushes back direct evidence for portable wooden tools by about 40,000 years and provides the first such evidence from southeastern Europe.