300,000-year-old wooden tools unearthed in southwest China

Recent excavations in Gantangqing, China, have produced the earliest known evidence of complex wooden tool technology in East Asia.

The wooden tools were found alongside stone tools, antler billets (soft hammers used for stone toolmaking) and cut-marked bones. The collection dates to about 361,000 to 250,000 years ago during the Middle Pleistocene.

Indirect evidence from residues on stone tools suggests that hominins have been woodworking for at least 1.5 million years.

But it’s rare for wooden tools from the Early and Middle Pleistocene to have survived until today. So far, they have only been found in Africa and western Eurasia.

A study presenting the new findings in the journal Science notes that the Gantangqing implements “document the use of wooden artifacts in a completely different type of environment from Europe or Africa.”

“Gantangqing presents a scenario of early hominin subsistence in subtropical and tropical environments that is plant-orientated, in contrast to northern temperate environments such as Schöningen where the hunting of large mammals is clearly dominant,” write the authors.

The wooden spears and throwing sticks from Schöningen, Germany, which date back to about 300,000 years ago, are different from Gantangqing’s array of small, hand-held tools would have been used mainly for digging up and processing plants.

“Compared with the wooden artifacts found at other sites … Gantangqing has a wider range of implements (particularly of small tools), implying considerable foresight by hominins in the selection of suitable wood for toolmaking and the intentional manufacture of tips, edges or handles suitable for tool-using purposes.

“Although most of the wooden pieces uncovered are fragmented and formless, we successfully identified 35 wood products showing obvious traces of intentional shaping and use. Most were made from pine (a soft wood for working) but a few were made from harder wood.”

The wood showed evidence of being intentionally selected for its suitable edges and handles.

Shaping marks such as consistent whittling or wear and smoothing on the surface of the removed branches or twigs were also present.

Signs of tool use included broken tips with soil residues, rounded breakage, fractures, flat surfaces, and polish and striations on the edges.

“Four billets (soft hammers) were also found and these are the earliest known in East Asia … The sophisticated wooden tools and the application of soft hammer flaking at the site imply that hominins in Middle Pleistocene East Asia had advanced tool technology and cognitive and adaptive capabilities that are comparable to their western counterparts,” the authors write.

The Gantangqing site is on the southern margin of Lake Fuxian in Yunnan province.

In the Middle Pleistocene, the area would have had a warm and humid subtropical climate, with fossilised vegetation indicating that the area around Gantangqing was a swamp or lake.

Plant starch granules were found on the tops of some of the wooden implements. This suggests they were used to extract aquatic plants from the shallow waters and muddy deposits of the lake shore.

The source materials for the stone artifacts uncovered cannot be found within 5km of the site. The researchers believe they were brought there.

“Our results suggest that hominins at Gantangqing made strategic utilisation of lakeshore food resources,” the authors write.

“They made planned visits to the lakeshore and brought with them fabricated tools of selected wood for exploiting underground tubers, rhizomes, or corms. This scenario implies considerable foresight by hominins in making and using suitable wooden and stone tools for anticipated purpose and a detailed understanding of where, when, and which plants, and which parts of plants, were edible. As such, the Gantangqing assemblage shows the likely use of underground storage organs and the importance of plant foods in early hominin diets in a subtropical environment.”