597 hollow molds reveal Neanderthal wooden spears and tools

The finds come from Abric Romaní, a rock shelter in Capellades, about 30 miles west of Barcelona. The shelter sits under a cliff of travertine, a type of limestone that forms when water rich in calcium carbonate flows and drips over surfaces.

Over thousands of years, that mineral water coated wooden objects lying on the shelter floor, from logs and branches to tools. Periodic flooding probably helped. When the wood decayed, it left behind cavities in the hardened crust that held its shape, some so detailed that researchers can see microscopic features of the original wood.

To study them, the team poured resin into some imprints to make casts, and used 3D scanning to build digital models of others. Excavations at the site have run since 1983, but this is the first time all of its wooden evidence has been analyzed together.

Here’s the detail many early reports glossed over. The study, published in Science Advances on October 7, documents 597 wooden remains and imprints from 16 layers dated to between about 62,000 and 40,000 years ago. Most of those are ordinary trunks, branches, roots and piles of firewood.

Thirteen stand out as objects Neanderthals clearly made or used. That’s a small number, but for wood this old it’s a remarkable haul. They include:

• Two spears. One is 2.45 meters (8 feet) long and looks suited to thrusting at prey up close. The other survives to 1.99 meters (6.5 feet) and has a deliberately shaped point.
• Bark trays. Four flat pieces of charred juniper bark, some up to 55 centimeters long, may have served as plates, shallow bowls or scoops for moving embers and ash.
• Cooking and shelter structures. Crossed poles above a hearth may have formed a tripod-like support for food, and a smooth pole about 5.10 meters long, ringed by five hearths, may have held up a windbreak or small hut in a sleeping area.
• Digging sticks. Thick sticks that could have been used to dig up roots and tubers, or pits for fires and waste.

The most unusual find came from the layer the team calls level P. It’s a single piece of wood with a narrow handle of about 16 centimeters and a bulky, lopsided head roughly 14 centimeters tall. Scraping grooves on its surface show it was shaped on purpose, not just a branch with an odd knot. Stone blades turned up in the same layer.

Nothing quite like it had been identified in the Neanderthal record before. What it was for is still open. It could have been a weapon for close-range hunting or fighting, as similar clubs were among more recent hunter-gatherers. It could also have been a work tool, or an object with social meaning. Without clear signs of wear, the researchers say they can’t tell.

Earlier wooden finds tell a narrower story. England’s Clacton-on-Sea yielded a spear tip, Germany’s Schöningen gave up a set of famous spears, and at Lehringen, also in Germany, a spear lay among an elephant’s bones. These are mostly hunting weapons from waterlogged lakeshores, where low oxygen slowed decay.

Abric Romaní is different because it was a home. The roughly 3,200-square-foot shelter had fireplaces, trash pits and sleeping areas. So the wood shows up in domestic life: serving food, managing fires, organizing space.

The researchers’ main point is that it keeps appearing. Wood turns up in layer after layer over some 20,000 years, used for very different jobs. Co-author M. Gema Chacón of the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA) said this shows woodworking was not occasional, but simply part of their technology.

Outside experts agree, with a caveat. Chris Stringer of London’s Natural History Museum, who wasn’t involved, noted the evidence comes from one site, one region and one time span, and called it the tip of the iceberg of a hidden technology that ran alongside stone tools.

For most of us, Neanderthals arrive through museum displays of stone points and scrapers. That’s a survivor’s bias. Wood is far easier to shape than stone, and early humans likely used it for weapons, containers and countless things that simply rotted.

This study is a reminder that the past we see is only the part that lasted. The people at Abric Romaní ate off bark plates, cooked over supported fires and slept behind windbreaks, habits that feel surprisingly familiar. As study co-author Chacón put it, their behavior now looks very close to that of Homo sapiens.

The work isn’t finished. The team is still digging at Abric Romaní, and new imprints keep appearing as more layers are exposed. Next, they want to learn how much effort went into making and maintaining each wooden tool.