Oldest Neanderthal wooden tools found in Spain

Archaeological excavations at Aranbaltza site in the Basque Country coast (Northern Spain), have revealed several episodes of Neanderthal occupations with preserved wooden remains. The fieldwork is leaded by Joseba Rios-Garaizar, archaeologist from the Spanish Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH). In 2015, the excavation revealed two very well preserved wooden tools; one of them is a 15 cm long digging stick.

The detailed analysis of this tool and the Luminescence dating of the sediment that bares the wooden remains indicate that the objects were deposited around 90,000 years and thus, they were made by Neanderthals.

The Micro-CT analysis and a close examination of the surface developed at CENIEH laboratories have shown that a yew trunk was cut longitudinally into two halves. One of this halves was scraped with a stone-tool, and treated with fire to harden it and to facilitate the scraping to obtain a pointed morphology. Use-wear analysis revealed that it was used for digging in search of food, flint, or simply to make holes in the ground. Read more.