An artist’s reconstruction of a Marathousa 1 paleolithic woman producing a digging stick from a small alder tree trunk with a small stone tool. This kind of wood was used for the Marathousa 1 digging stick. Use-wear analysis of stone tools at Marathousa 1 shows evidence of woodworking.
Credit: Original art by G. Prieto, copyright K. Harvati.
Earliest evidence of wooden tools used by humans - University of Reading
This is another of those pieces of evidence that should not exist if the Bible narrative were true — yet it does. The only honest conclusion is that the Bible narrative is false. It simply never happened. In scientific terms, this is falsification.
The evidence was published on 26 January 2026 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). It consists of two worked wooden objects discovered at Marathousa 1, in Greece’s central Peloponnese, by an international team led by researchers from the University of Reading, the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment. The tools have been dated to about 430,000 years ago, making them the earliest known hand-held wooden tools and pushing back direct evidence for this kind of technology by at least 40,000 years.
That is awkward evidence for creationists, because the Bible is commonly interpreted by them as saying that humans were created only about 6,000–10,000 years ago, followed by a catastrophic global flood that supposedly covered even the highest mountains. Such an event should either have obliterated fragile evidence of wooden tool use or buried it beneath a thick, worldwide layer of flood sediment containing the remains of the animals and plants destroyed in that catastrophe. And, of course, loose wooden tools submerged in a global flood would hardly be expected to remain neatly preserved in the archaeological context in which they were used.
Yet these wooden tools exist. They were recovered from secure Middle Pleistocene deposits, not from some chaotic jumble of flood debris. They are associated with stone tools, worked bone and butchered animal remains, including elephant, showing that Marathousa 1 was a lakeshore site used by early humans for a range of activities, including butchery and woodworking. In other words, the evidence is not floating around without context; it forms part of a coherent archaeological scene about 420,000 years older than the creationist date for the magical creation of Earth and everything on it.
One of the objects is a small alder trunk fragment with clear traces of shaping and use-wear, consistent with a multifunctional digging stick probably used at the edge of the ancient lake. The other is a much smaller worked piece of willow or poplar, possibly representing a previously unknown type of small Pleistocene wooden tool. A third piece of alder, initially investigated as a possible artefact, appears instead to have been marked by a large carnivore, possibly a bear — another indication that humans and carnivores were exploiting the same lakeshore environment.
The Marathousa 1 site lay in the Megalopolis Basin, a region that appears to have acted as a glacial refugium during a critical period in human evolution, when more complex behaviours and more diverse technologies were developing. The finds show early humans using not just stone, but wood and bone too — exactly what we should expect from intelligent, adaptable hominins making use of the materials around them, and exactly what is so rarely preserved because wood normally decays long before it can fossilise or survive archaeologically.
Marathousa 1 — a 430,000-year-old lakeshore butchery site. Marathousa 1 is a Lower Palaeolithic open-air archaeological site in the Megalopolis Basin of Greece’s central Peloponnese. During the Middle Pleistocene, the area was not the dry inland landscape seen today but part of a palaeolake system, with shallow water, marshy margins and fine-grained sediments that helped preserve animal bones, stone tools, worked bone and, in exceptional cases, wood. The site was discovered in 2013 during targeted palaeoanthropological survey work and has since become one of the most important early human sites in south-eastern Europe. [1]The publication of the paper was accompanied by a press release from the University of Reading:
The archaeological remains show that early humans repeatedly used the lakeshore for practical activities, especially the processing of large animals. Excavations have revealed stone artefacts, worked bone, cut-marked animal bones and the remains of a straight-tusked elephant, Palaeoloxodon antiquus, together with other large mammals. The association of tools and butchered bones in the same stratigraphic context shows that this was not a random accumulation of fossils but a preserved activity area where hominins were exploiting animal carcasses beside the ancient lake. [1]
The exceptional preservation at Marathousa 1 is due largely to its fine-grained, waterlogged lake-margin sediments. Wood normally rots away quickly and is therefore almost invisible in the deep archaeological record, leaving stone tools to give a misleadingly narrow picture of early human technology. At Marathousa 1, however, the sediments preserved pieces of wood long enough for researchers to identify two objects deliberately shaped and used by hominins: an alder stick probably used for digging or stripping bark, and a much smaller willow or poplar object that may represent a previously unknown type of Pleistocene wooden tool. [2]
The site has been dated by combining several independent lines of evidence rather than by radiocarbon dating, which cannot reach anywhere near this far back. The main methods include post-infrared infrared stimulated luminescence dating of potassium-rich feldspar grains from the sediments, electron spin resonance dating of animal teeth and mollusc shells, stratigraphy, sedimentology, and comparison with known climatic stages of the Pleistocene. Luminescence dating measures when mineral grains were last exposed to sunlight before burial, while ESR dating measures radiation damage accumulated in tooth enamel or shell since burial. [3]
The current age estimate places the wooden tools at about 430,000 years old, during Marine Isotope Stage 12, one of the severe glacial stages of the Middle Pleistocene. Earlier work produced age estimates within the broader 0.5–0.4 million-year range, but the current interpretation favours a date around 430,000 years ago. This makes Marathousa 1 important not merely as a butchery site, but as evidence that early humans in southern Europe were using a range of materials — stone, bone and wood — in a complex technological repertoire far earlier than the biblical timescale allows. [2]
Earliest evidence of wooden tools used by humans
An international team led by researchers from the University of Reading, the University of Tübingen and Reading and Senckenberg Nature Research Society has discovered the earliest known hand-held wooden tools used by humans.
A study jointly led by Professor Katerina Harvati from the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen and Dr Annemieke Milks at University of Reading describes discoveries from the Marathousa 1 site in Greece’s central Peloponnese which date back 430,000 years.
Published today (Monday, 26 January) in the journal PNAS, the finds consist of two objects crafted and used by humans, one made of alder wood and the other of willow or poplar. The objects represent the oldest hand-held wooden tools ever found, pushing back evidence of this type of tool use by at least 40,000 years.
Other finds of stone tools and the remains of an elephant and other animals indicate that the site, once on the shore of a lake, was used for butchering animals. The site was used by early humans around 430,000 years ago during the Middle Pleistocene – the period from around 774,000 to 129,000 years ago.
The Middle Pleistocene was a critical phase in human evolution, during which more complex behaviors developed. The earliest reliable evidence of the targeted technological use of plants also dates from this period.
Professor Katerina Harvati, lead author
Department of Geosciences Paleoanthropology
Institute for Archaeological Sciences
Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen
Tübingen, Germany.
Worked stones and bone artefacts from the site highlighted the skill and diverse activities of the people who once lived there, so the research team took a closer look at the associated finds made of wood.
Specimen Marathousa ID 39, the digging or multifunctional stick
Photograph by D. Michailidis, copyright K. Harvati.
Unlike stones, wooden objects need special conditions to survive over long periods of time. We examined all the wooden remains closely, looking at their surfaces under microscopes. We found marks from chopping and carving on two objects – clear signs that early humans had shaped them.
Dr Annemieke Milks, first author.
Department of Archaeology
University of Reading
Reading, U.K.
Meticulous examination
The research team identified two wooden artefacts that had been worked by humans: a small piece of an alder trunk shows clear signs of having been shaped as well as signs of wear and tear. The stick was probably used for digging at the edge of the lake, or for removing tree bark. A second, very small piece of wood from a willow or poplar tree shows signs of working and possible signs of use.
A third find – a larger piece of alder trunk with a groove pattern – had been clawed by a large carnivore, possibly a bear, and not shaped by humans, the researchers concluded.
The oldest wooden tools come from places such as the United Kingdom, Zambia, Germany, and China and include weapons, digging sticks, and tool handles. However, they are all more recent than our finds from Marathousa 1.
Dr Annemieke Milks.
There is only one older piece of evidence of wood used by humans, from the Kalambo Falls site in Zambia, dating to around 476,000 years ago. Yet that wood was used not as a tool but as structural material.
Specimen Marathousa ID 13, the small wooden tool which is a new wood tool type, documented here for the first time. Currently its function is not known.Photograph by N. Thompson, copyright K. Harvati.
We have discovered the oldest wooden tools known to date, as well as the first evidence of this kind from southeastern Europe. This shows once again how exceptionally good the conditions at the Marathousa 1 site are for preservation. And the fact that large carnivores left their mark near the butchered elephant alongside human activity indicates fierce competition between the two.
Professor Katerina Harvati.
The team also included researchers from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the University of Ioannina, the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
Publication:
And that is the central problem for creationists: this evidence should not be there. If the Bible narrative were real history, there should be no 430,000-year-old lakeshore butchery site in Greece, no Middle Pleistocene sediments preserving wooden tools, no associated stone tools and butchered elephant remains, and no coherent archaeological context showing early humans exploiting a lake-margin environment hundreds of thousands of years before the alleged creation of the world.
Nor can the evidence be rescued by invoking a global flood. A catastrophic flood covering the highest mountains would not carefully preserve fragile wooden objects in situ in fine lake-margin deposits, alongside the remains of the animals being butchered and the tools used to process them. It would produce a chaotic destruction layer, not a recognisable archaeological site with stratigraphy, palaeoenvironmental context, and multiple independent lines of dating converging on the Middle Pleistocene.
What Marathousa 1 gives us is not a theological puzzle but a scientific one: a rare glimpse of early human behaviour that is normally lost because wood decays. It shows that hominins were not merely chipping stone but were making practical use of perishable materials too — wood, bone and whatever else served their needs. That is precisely what evolutionary anthropology predicts: adaptable, tool-using primates gradually expanding their behavioural repertoire over immense periods of time.
Creationism, by contrast, predicts none of this. It has no explanation for why such evidence exists, why it occurs in the geological context it does, why it is associated with extinct Pleistocene animals, or why independent dating methods place it hundreds of thousands of years outside the biblical timescale. All it can do is deny, distract or invent ad hoc excuses after the fact.
So once again, the evidence does not merely fail to support the Bible narrative; it actively contradicts it. Marathousa 1 is another small but solid piece of the vast, interlocking body of evidence showing that Earth and life on it are ancient, that humans have a long evolutionary history, and that the creationist version of events is not history at all, but mythology being asked to do the work of science and providing simplistic answers for simpletons for whom learnign is hard and learning science is impossible.
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