430k-year-old well-preserved wooden tools are the oldest ever found

Summary

“I’ve never tried to cut up an elephant carcass, so I don’t know,” Dr. Havarti said. “I assume it’s not so easy, but I mean, I guess it’s possible.”Elephantine toolsThere is no older or more comprehensive assemblage of carved, sharpened elephant-bone tools than the collection uncovered over the last decade in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, which dates back 1.5 million years. Previously, European elephant-bone tools were thought to be limited to the warmer south and to have appeared within the last 450,000 years. But a hammer made of elephant or mammoth bone, discovered at the Boxgrove site in West Sussex in England during the 1990s and only recently identified, overturns that assumption.The setting is rich in flint, bone and antler fossils, but this was the first tool of elephantine bone discovered there. Deformities on its surface indicate that it was created and used while fresh, leaving researchers to speculate on whether the ancient elephant was hunted or scavenged.Dr. Bello said the tool, four inches long and triangular, was used for knapping, the process of breaking off flakes from a stone to create tools like hand axes. Researchers found distinctive notches and marks on the bone fragment. “The hammer has been struck against stone, repeatedly,” Dr. Bello said. “The small pieces of flint found embedded in the bone confirm that it was used for this specialized purpose.”Citing the maxim that an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, Dr. Bello suggested that the apparent scarcity of early tools resulted from poor preservation or difficulties in identification. Thomas Terberger, an expert in ancient artifact analysis at the Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage in Hannover, Germany, agreed. “Further proof may be found in as-yet undiscovered sites or existing museum collections,” he said.Dr. Terberger noted that the new studies highlighted the diversity of raw materials that prehistoric people used for toolmaking. “Flint was more common, but bone ...