The earliest known hand-held wooden tools, used by our early human ancestors around 430,000 years ago, have been uncovered by researchers at an archeological site in Greece.One is made from the trunk of an alder tree and could have been used for digging, and the other is a small willow or poplar artifact that may have been used to shape stones, according to a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.“What’s particularly exciting about finds like this is that we just so rarely have wood preserved for that long,” the study’s lead author, Annemieke Milks, told NBC News by phone Tuesday.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementStone tools have been recovered by archeologists for centuries because they preserve really well, said Milks, a researcher and a leading expert in early wooden tools at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. “So it’s really nice to be able to enrich our understanding of human evolution by finding these extremely rare objects,” she added.Researchers have known that early human ancestors would have been also making use of wood to make tools and now there is evidence of very early use, she added.The tools were found at a site called the Megalopolis Basin in Marathousa, Greece, about 100 miles southwest of the capital, Athens.Once a lakeshore, it has provided evidence of other early human ancestor activity, including the making and use of stone and bone artifacts, as well as killing of elephants and other animals, according to researchers.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe smaller tool is particularly interesting, Milks said. “We have never seen anything like it,” she said, adding that they don’t fully understand its function. “It’s just really different, and it’s tiny. We’re lucky that we found it.”R …
