Megalopolis coal mine yields five Paleolithic sites including 700,000-year-old tools and world's oldest wooden tools

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Key facts

• Opencast lignite mine operated by Greece's Public Power Corporation in the Megalopolis basin, Arcadia, central Peloponnese, cuts through Middle Pleistocene lake mud
• Research led by Panagiotis Karkanas, Katerina Harvati, and Eleni Panagopoulou, with five new sites identified between 2018 and 2022
• Kipparissia 4, about 70 m below the old ground surface, contained stone tools alongside bones of extinct giant deer, hippos, rhinos, elephants, and a macaque tooth, but no human fossils; dated to around 700,000 years
• Marathousa 1 produced a straight-tusked elephant skeleton (male, about 60 years old, 3.7 m at the shoulder, approximately 9 tons) with cut marks and marrow breakage, dated to around 430,000 years
• In January 2026, the team published the oldest known handheld wooden tools, including a worked alder trunk shaped into a digging stick and a small willow or poplar tool; a third alder piece shows carnivore claw marks
• Marathousa 2 (~450,000 years) yielded a hippopotamus skeleton with cut marks
• Trioupi 4 (~400,000 years) produced tools made with new techniques
• Kyarissi 7 (~280,000 years) is the oldest Middle Palaeolithic site in Greece
• Marathousa 1 sits within the MIS-12 glacial, one of the harshest cold periods of the ice age

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