Neanderthals in Spain carved a wooden object that matches nothing archaeologists have ever found

A single piece of wood, carved with a clear handle of about 16 centimeters and a widened, pointed head, lay in a layer of a Spanish rock shelter that Neanderthals used some 60,000 years ago. The archaeologists who studied it call it a mace-like object, and they cannot say what it was for. No other prehistoric object is known to match it.

The carving is one of 13 worked pieces singled out from 597 wooden remains and imprints recovered at Abric Romaní, a rock shelter in Capellades, about 50 kilometers from Barcelona. The analysis appears in Science Advances, and it is the first full study of the wood from more than four decades of digging at the site.

Level P and the mace-like carving

The object comes from level P of the shelter. According to the Diari de Tarragona, it was shaped from a single piece of wood, with a handle of roughly 16 cm and a thickened, pointed end. Longitudinal striations along the surface point to deliberate scraping, the kind of tool marks that separate a shaped object from a branch that simply happened to survive.

Its purpose is the open part. The authors consider that the form fits a percussion tool for hunting or other tasks, and, according to Tercera Informacion, they add that ethnographic parallels raise the possibility of a symbolic or social meaning, while conceding that this is hard to confirm. The study team describes the configuration as having no known parallel in the prehistoric record, which is a statement about the objects archaeologists have recovered so far, not about everything Neanderthals ever made.

That caveat matters because wood almost never survives. The carving is unmatched among known finds partly because there are so few wooden Neanderthal objects to compare it with.

Travertine molds and the older wood record

Abric Romaní holds the wood because of the water running over it. Calcium carbonate built up around trunks, branches and tools, and after the organic material rotted it left natural molds in the travertine. As Archaeology Magazine describes it, some of those molds are detailed enough to show internal tissue structure of the plant.

The site has produced wood for years. A 2011 season recovered the charred remains of a tool with a handle, about 15 cm long and 8 cm wide, which excavation director Eudald Carbonell called unique in the world. The institute’s own account of its 2019 field season noted that level R, dated to about 60,000 years ago, was yielding a very important number of wood negatives and molds. The new paper gathers all of it into one inventory covering 16 archaeological levels.

Spears, bark trays and a 5.10-meter pole

The mace is not alone among the 13 worked pieces. Level R produced two wooden spears. One measures 2.45 meters and is shaped for thrusting at close range; the other survives at 1.99 meters, in three fragments, and ends in a deliberately shaped point. One spear lay with deer remains, though the authors say the study cannot confirm it was used for hunting.

Four flattened, charred pieces of bark, some of them concave and some from juniper, may be trays or containers, and they lay near hearths. A cluster of crossed poles sat over a combustion structure and may be the remains of a raised platform for preparing food. A straight, branchless piece 5.10 meters long appears to have been modified, and could have belonged to a light structure or been used to organize the living space.

Most of the rest is fuel. Scots pine, Pinus sylvestris, dominates the assemblage, and some groups stored firewood, which shows in the way piles were collected, carried and stacked.

Saladié’s team and the limits Stringer sets

The study was led from IPHES-CERCA, the Catalan institute for human paleoecology, with Palmira Saladié as lead author. She directs the excavations with M. Gema Chacón and Josep Vallverdú, and all three are associate professors at the university in Tarragona that co-led the study. The paper is catalogued as Science Advances, volume 12, issue 41. Vallverdú, quoted in the Spanish coverage, put the result plainly: Neanderthal technology went far beyond stone.

Chacón said the wood now opens a part of the Neanderthal world that had almost always disappeared. Saladié made the same point about preservation, saying the most extraordinary aspect of the site is that things that usually vanish can be seen.

Outside voices keep the claim in proportion. According to the RexMolon report, the finds cannot show whether Neanderthals made more wooden tools than stone ones, and nothing indicates that fire was used to harden them, although some pieces are charred. Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London called the evidence just the tip of the iceberg, since it comes from one site, one area and one period, between roughly 62,000 and 40,000 years ago.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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