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

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Key facts

• An opencast lignite mine operated by Greece's Public Power Corporation in the Megalopolis basin, Arcadia, central Peloponnese, cuts through Middle Pleistocene lake mud.
• Five Paleolithic sites were investigated in the Megalopolis area; Marathousa 1 was already documented as a discovery in 2015, so they were not all newly identified between 2018 and 2022.
• Kyparissia 4, about 70 m below the former ground surface, contained stone tools alongside bones of extinct giant deer, hippos, rhinos, elephants and a macaque tooth, but no human fossils; it is dated to around 700,000 years ago.
• Marathousa 1 produced a straight-tusked elephant skeleton—a male about 60 years old, 3.7 m at the shoulder and approximately 9 tons heavy—with cut marks and marrow breakage, dated to around 430,000 years ago.
• In January 2026, the team published the oldest known handheld wooden tools, including an alder trunk shaped into a digging stick and a small willow or poplar tool; a third alder piece bears carnivore claw marks.
• Marathousa 2, around 450,000 years old, yielded a hippopotamus skeleton with cut marks.
• Trioupi 4, around 400,000 years old, produced tools made with new techniques.
• Kyarissi 7, around 280,000 years old, is the oldest Middle Palaeolithic site in Greece.
• Marathousa 1 dates to the MIS-12 glacial, one of the harshest cold periods of the ice age.

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