The Stone Age owes its name to tools that survived to our time. The material early humans worked with most, though, was probably wood because it is so much easier to process. Unfortunately, we know very little about Paleolithic woodwork because wood rots relatively quickly. But at Abric Romaní, a rock shelter in Capellades, west of Barcelona, mineral-rich water coated wooden Neanderthal tools in a limestone-like crust. When wood rotted away, it left behind hollow molds that faithfully reflect its shape.
In a recent Science Advances study, a team of Spanish archaeologists has cataloged 597 wooden remains from Neanderthal living areas dating from 62,000 to 40,000 years ago. They found spears, digging sticks, bark trays, parts of shelters, and a club unlike anything seen before, suggesting Neanderthals were likely much more than just Homo sapiens’ dumber cousins.
Beyond hunting gear
The oldest wooden artifacts we have are mostly weapons. They include spears from a German town called Schöningen, a spear tip from Clacton-on-Sea in England, and the spear found alongside an elephant skeleton in Lehringen, Germany. Most came from waterlogged sediments, where a lack of oxygen slowed decay.
The spears mostly give us information about how Neanderthals hunted. The findings at Abric Romaní are different because the finds come from a place where Neanderthals lived, slept, cooked, and made tools over the course of some 20,000 years.
“We have a sample of wooden tools for different subsistence activities, not only hunting,” says M. Gema Chacón, an archaeologist at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA) and co-author of the study. Because wood turns up in level after level, it shows that woodworking was routine for Neanderthals rather than an occasional one-off.
Travertine molds
The shelter sits at the foot of a cliff of travertine, a limestone laid down by calcium-rich spring water. As that water dripped across the shelter floor, calcium carbonate settled on anything lying around—logs, leaves, pine cones, and Neanderthal tools. Sealed inside the crust, the wood slowly decomposed, leaving hollow molds. These are perfect negatives of the original objects, sometimes so detailed that the outlines of wood cells are visible under a microscope.
Abric Romaní has been explored continuously since 1983, so the team has had time to develop a method for excavating objects that are essentially empty space. Each find is outlined, mapped, and photographed, and restoration specialists consolidate the fragile crust. “Then we open very carefully one part of the object,” Chacón explains.
In the past, the team filled the hollows with resin or plaster to get a positive cast. “Now all the wooden remains are printed in 3D,” Chacón says. The molds are digitized with 3D scanning and photogrammetry, and the 3D-printed copies are used both for research and museum displays.
Most of the 597 remains turned out to be natural trunks, fallen branches, and lots of firewood, mostly Scots pine. Only 13 objects were made or modified by Neanderthals. “The morphology of these 13 tools is impossible to find in nature,” says Chacón.
Neanderthal housekeeping
Four shallow trays made of juniper bark, the largest 55 by 20 centimeters, were found near hearths. They may have been used to carry food or scoop embers, much like the bark dishes called coolamons used by Aboriginal Australians. Crossed poles over a thick hearth may be the remains of a tripod, possibly for processing food. A branchless pole more than five meters long was found in the innermost part of the shelter.
That pole fits a pattern seen in every level dug so far. Along the back wall, Neanderthals kept a row of small hearths, around 50 centimeters across and spaced a meter or so apart, with almost no debris around them. Chacón suspects these were sleeping hearths. “This gives you illumination and also protects you from possible carnivores or other animals that could attack the group,” she says. The team thinks the pole leaned against the wall to form a windbreak or simple hut, and experiments showed five meters is about the length such a structure needs.
The shelter’s busy end included large, overlapping hearths surrounded by animal bones, stone-knapping debris, and firewood. That’s where food was prepared, tools were made, and, the team thinks, meals were shared.
But there were also weapons.
Spears and a club
The team found a pointed stick and two spears lying close to the antlered skulls of red deer. The best-preserved spear is 2.45 meters long. Chacón says a cast of its point shows an impact fracture identical to those on spears used by Aboriginal Australians. That kind of damage happens when a point strikes bone or something similarly hard. The most surprising find, though, was a club.
The club was carved from a single piece of wood, with a 16-centimeter handle and a pointed, roughly triangular head about 14 centimeters tall. Where the two meet, there is an abrupt right-angle step that may have kept the hand from slipping. The only earlier object hypothesized to be a club has been found in Kalambo Falls in Zambia and is roughly 400,000 years old. According to Chacón, nothing quite like the Romaní club has turned up anywhere.
Anthropologists have observed and documented hunter-gatherer groups over the last couple of centuries and found they used similar clubs to kill game at close range, fight, and sometimes as symbols of social standing. “But when it comes to this club it’s true that we are not sure,” Chacón admits. The club was found in a living area, next to bones, stone tools, and a hearth, so the team hypothesizes it’s been used for everyday work rather than ceremony.
Design ideas
The choice of materials suggests Neanderthals knew their wood. Scots pine is easy to work and dries quickly, so tools were cheap to make and replace. Juniper’s fibrous bark suited the trays. Firewood tended to be dry wood, while tools were made from fresh wood. “When they went to look for wood, it was like when they went to look for stone; they knew exactly what they wanted to make,” says Chacón. “This implies not only planning, but a bit of complexity in the brain to organize your activities.”
That fits a broader shift, as evidence has piled up that Neanderthals twisted fibers into cord, made symbolic objects, and interbred with our species. “Neanderthals are no longer perceived as Homo sapiens’ dumb cousins,” Chacón says. She suggested that the Abric Romaní tools may offer a new perspective to interpret finds at other sites.
“To study all these types of tools properly, you need a lot of time and budget,” Chacón says. Neanderthal tools from Abric Romaní were first described in the 1990s, so it took decades for the team to identify and catalog them. This makes her concerned that insufficient time and funds might have cost us missing similar discoveries elsewhere. “I hear from colleagues telling me ‘perhaps we found something that we thought was wood, we excavated it, we took pictures, but we didn’t keep it,’” she says. “Now they say perhaps it could be a tool.”
Science Advances, 2026. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aeh2287
