Neanderthals in Spain May Have Made Wooden Spears Known Only From Mineral Casts

At the Abric Romaní rock shelter near Barcelona, Neanderthals may have made wooden spears up to about 2.5 metres long. The wood itself has rotted away. What survives are mineral casts of it in the limestone. A study in Science Advances, published on 7 October 2026, describes 597 wooden remains and impressions from the site, and 13 of them show signs of shaping or use.

How wood survives for 40,000 years or more

Wood almost never lasts this long. At Abric Romaní, calcium carbonate formed around wooden objects and left molds in the limestone layers after the wood decayed. Some casts preserve detail down to the cellular level. The remains come from 16 archaeological levels, gathered over four decades of excavation, in layers that date to roughly 62,000 to 40,000 years ago.

What the team identified

The researchers describe two possible close-range spears, about 2.5 metres and 2 metres long, and the shorter one shows deliberate sharpening. They also report a carved, club-like or mace-like piece with a handle and a thicker end, structural poles that may have supported a shelter or a platform for food preparation, a possible tripod, pointed objects that may be digging sticks, and charred bark objects that may have been trays or containers. These identifications are interpretations. Most of the wood in the assemblage was natural: roots, branches, twigs and trunks, many gathered as fuel.

Why it matters

Wooden tools from the Middle Paleolithic are rare, so most of what we know about Neanderthal technology comes from stone. Older wooden finds exist, such as weapons from Germany about 300,000 years old, but the Abric Romaní record adds wooden objects in a domestic setting, which suggests Neanderthals used wood for far more than hunting.

Sources

“Neanderthal Woodworking at Abric Romaní: Insights into the Role of Wood in a Middle Palaeolithic Domestic Context,” Science Advances (2026), DOI 10.1126/sciadv.aeh2287, by researchers at IPHES-CERCA and Universitat Rovira i Virgili. Details here come from ScienceAlert and The Debrief reports of the paper, both dated 10 October 2026; we could not open the paper itself.