Posted on 07/10/2025 5:42:13 AM PDT by Red Badger
New evidence from a Pleistocene site in southwestern China reveals the oldest known use of intricately crafted wooden tools in East Asia, dating back over 350,000 years. Credit: Liu et al., 10.1126/science.adr8540.
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Newly uncovered wooden tools from Pleistocene China reveal complex, plant-focused technology far earlier than expected in East Asia.
Researchers working at the Pleistocene-era Gantangqing site in southwestern China have uncovered a diverse set of wooden tools dating from approximately 361,000 to 250,000 years ago. This discovery represents the oldest known example of advanced wooden tool technology in East Asia. Analysis of the tools suggests they were not created for hunting but were instead designed for tasks like digging and processing plants, offering new insight into the daily lives of early humans in the region.
While it is well established that early humans have been crafting wooden tools for more than a million years, such artifacts are rarely preserved, especially from the Early and Middle Pleistocene. Most of the wooden tools previously recovered come from archaeological sites in Africa and western Eurasia. Some of the most significant finds include spears and throwing sticks unearthed in Germany and the United Kingdom, which date back between 300,000 and 400,000 years. Other important examples include wooden construction elements from Zambia and tools like digging sticks and planks found at sites in Israel and Italy.
While the long-standing Bamboo Hypothesis argues that early East Asian populations relied on bamboo for toolmaking, archaeological evidence for organic material-based tools from the region is scarce.
The Gantangqing Discovery: A Technological Milestone
Here, Jian-Hui Liu and colleagues present new findings from the Gantangqing site in southwestern China, which has yielded a wide range of artifacts. Among these are 35 wooden artifacts that exhibit clear evidence of intentional shaping and use, including signs of carving, smoothing, and wear, suggesting that they were purposefully crafted by hominins.
These tools, most of which were fashioned from pine, range from large two-handed digging sticks to smaller hand-held implements, and even include hook-like tools potentially used for cutting plant roots. According to Liu et al., compared to other well-known contemporaneous wooden tool sites in Europe, which are generally characterized by medium-sized hunting gear, Gantangqing stands out for its broader and more diverse array of small, hand-held tools designed primarily for digging up and processing plants.
The sophistication of these wooden tools underscores the importance of organic artifacts in interpreting early human behavior, particularly in regions where stone tools alone suggest a more “primitive” technological landscape, say the authors.
Reference:
300,000-year-old wooden tools from Gantangqing, southwest China”
by Jian-Hui Liu, Qi-Jun Ruan, Jun-Yi Ge, Yong-Jiang Huang, Xiao-Ling Zhang, Jia Liu, Shu-Feng Li, Hui Shen, Yuan Wang, Thomas A. Stidham, Cheng-Long Deng, Sheng-Hua Li, Fei Han, Ying-Shuai Jin, Kieran O’Gorman, Bo Li, Robin Dennell and Xing Gao, 3 July 2025, Science.
DOI: 10.1126/science.adr8540
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PinGGG!.....................
Pretty interesting.
Kinda wondering how wood lasts 300,000 years, though.
Pine besides...
To my mind, these are not ‘digging’ tools.
They are for puncturing holes in animal skins so that they can be sewn together with strips of animal skin to be worn as a garment.................
Always be generous with the Minwax.
Intricately crafted? I would have said crude.
Crude, yes, but they had just learned to use opposable thumbs!............... 😏
Crude, yes, but they had just learned to use opposable thumbs!............... 😏
Fancy backscratchers.
Rot resistant woods like American chestnut, black locust, lignum, etc. are very durable. There are the remains of many chestnut trees on our property. They succumbed to the blight and fell over 100 years ago. While now covered with moss, etc. on the ground, peeling that off reveals solid wood.
“intricately crafted wooden tools in East Asia, dating back over 350,000 years”
TWEEEEEEET!
Biblical timeline violation.
That’s about how long it takes me to find my lost tools.
What did stay-at-home mom’s use to threaten their misbehaving children with? What was their ‘wooden spoon’? /s
Wait one, isn’t the Earth only like six or seven thousand years old?
I remember American Indian bone tools found that DATED TO 21,000 YEARS AGO! All the news papers ran with the story!
Then several years later was a small article buried in the back of a newspaper, the the items were actually only 2000 years old.
Also another story that due to an ancient blast from the sun, all radiocarbon datings were not as old as said but actually 500 years younger than originally said to be.
Wonder how many other datings are in error.
The first Harbor Freight store?
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