For more than a century, we have pictured NeanderthalsNeanderthalsA fossil humanity of Eurasia, robust and cold-adapted, extinct around 40,000 years before present.→ as men of stone. FlintFlintA hard, brittle siliceous rock, knapped by prehistoric people to produce blades, points and sharp tools.→-knappers, hunters armed with mineral points, craftsmen of rock. The image is not wrong, it is simply missing half the picture. For alongside stone there was wood, everywhere, for almost everything, and that wood has vanished. It rots, decays, returns to the earth within a few seasons, and with it a vast part of these humans' material culture is erased. Except in one place, in Catalonia, where a quirk of geology played the part of a time machine. At the rock shelterRock shelterA shallow cavity at the foot of a cliff or under a rocky overhang, offering natural shelter; a favoured site of prehistoric habitation and rock art.→ of Abric Romaní, near Capellades, a team led by the archaeologist Palmira Saladié has catalogued nearly six hundred wooden remains and imprints, including thirteen objects shaped or used by Neanderthals some 60,000 years ago. The study, published in the journal Science Advances in the autumn of 2026, offers the richest window ever opened onto this forgotten wooden world.1
A trove of wood drawn out of stone
The story begins with a paradox. The material most used by prehistoric humans is also the one archaeology sees least. Wood is easy to shape, far easier than stone or bone: it can be cut, pointed, hollowed, assembled. It served to make weapons, handles, containers, structures, and no doubt a host of objects we cannot even imagine. But wood is organic, and the organic decays. In the vast majority of Middle PalaeolithicPalaeolithicThe oldest and longest period of prehistory (c. 3.3 Ma–12,000 BC), defined by chipped stone tools and a hunter-gatherer way of life.→Middle PalaeolithicA Palaeolithic period (c. 300,000 to 40,000 years ago) associated mainly with Neanderthals and early Homo sapiensHomo sapiensThe present-day human species, which emerged in Africa around 300,000 years ago, the only surviving human lineage after the extinction of Neanderthals and Denisovans.→, marked by Levallois tools.→ sites, nothing survives of this wooden side of daily life, and we reconstruct the past from the only furniture that endured, stone, through a preservation bias that researchers know well but struggle to escape.4
Abric Romaní breaks this silence. The shelter, set into a travertine cliff some fifty kilometres from Barcelona, was visited repeatedly by Neanderthals over more than twenty thousand years. Researchers documented 597 wooden remains and imprints spread across 16 archaeological levels, dated between roughly 62,000 and 40,000 years before present. The great majority of these remains are not tools: they are trunks, branches, twigs, roots and piles of firewood, the wooden background noise of an inhabited place. But within this clutter, the team of Palmira Saladié, based at the Catalan Institute of Human PalaeoecologyPalaeoecologyThe study of past ecosystems and their relations with the environment, reconstructed from fossils, DNA and sediments.→ and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA) and the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, isolated thirteen pieces bearing the mark of human intervention: domestic objects, structural elements, tools and weapons.13
What makes Abric Romaní singular is not only the abundance of remains, it is their depth in time. At other European sites, an isolated spear, a stick, a handful of one-off objects have sometimes been found. Here, wood use can be followed across thousands of years and dozens of successive visits to the same spot. Wood appears not as an occasional resource but as a stable, recurring component of domestic life. "What we see at Abric Romaní is that this material was part of many aspects of their everyday lives, and that Neanderthal technology therefore extended far beyond stone," sums up Josep Vallverdú, a researcher at IPHES-CERCA and one of the study's co-authors.34
Travertine, a machine that moulds time
How could a material as perishable as wood cross sixty thousand years? The answer lies in the very nature of the rock that forms the shelter. Abric Romaní is set against a cliff of travertinetravertineCalcareous sedimentary rock formed by precipitation of calcium carbonate from calcium-rich waters, able to mould and preserve organic objects.→, a calcareous sedimentary rock that forms when water very rich in calcium runs over the ground and deposits, drop by drop, calcium carbonate on everything it meets. Branches, trunks, fallen leaves: the water coats them in a mineral crust that hugs their shape with astonishing precision.25
The mechanism has an almost cruel elegance. Calcium carbonate is laid down first around the wood, then the organic matter itself eventually rots and disappears inside its shell. What remains is a cavity, a negative, a natural mould that reproduces the shape of the vanished object. In some cases the precision is such that researchers can still make out the internal tissue structure of the wood, down to the cellular level. That, indeed, is how they are certain they are looking at traces of wood and nothing else: the imprint preserves the plant anatomy. "The imprints are formed when calcium carbonate precipitates onto plant structures, including wood, as part of the travertine formation process," the authors write in their paper.25
The comparison that comes to mind is Pompeii. Just as the Romans caught by the ash of Vesuvius left in the volcanic layer the imprint of their bodies, which archaeologists later cast in plaster, the wooden objects of Abric Romaní printed their silhouette in the rock before vanishing. Alongside these void-casts, part of the wood also survived in charred form, burnt in the hearths or at their edge, which adds a second source of information. Studying these remains was long possible only at the cost of painstaking moulding and restoration. Recent advances in three-dimensional recording changed everything: the team was able to digitise and reconstruct each imprint quickly, which finally allowed the comprehensive analysis the researchers had hoped for over many years. "These remains are extraordinary, but they are also very difficult to work with," acknowledges Palmira Saladié.4
Nearly six hundred remains, thirteen shaped objects
Of the 597 pieces inventoried, the overwhelming majority is therefore raw wood: fuel, brushwood, natural elements accumulated in the shelter. The team's sorting consisted in spotting, within this corpus, the objects bearing the marks of deliberate transformation or use: regularised surfaces, pointed ends, parallel shaping striations, forms too regular to be accidental. Thirteen pieces passed this filter, spread across several levels and several millennia, which rules out the hypothesis of a single, exceptional episode.13
That figure of thirteen may seem modest. It is not. To measure what it represents, one must recall that wooden objects from the European Palaeolithic can be counted, across the whole continent, on the fingers of a few hands. Every spear, every stick found elsewhere has been the subject of entire papers. Thirteen objects gathered at a single site, with their context, their hearths, their animal remains and their associated stone tools, make up an assemblage without equal. "We have the hearths, the stone tools, the animals they processed, and also the wood. When we bring all of this together, we can understand not only what Neanderthals were doing, but also how they organised the spaces they lived in, managed fire and other resources, and carried out their everyday activities," explains Palmira Saladié.4
The diversity of these thirteen objects is striking. Among them are weapons, containers, pointed pieces, and elements linked to the organisation of the dwelling. It is precisely this variety that gives the interpretation its weight: at Abric Romaní, wood does not serve a single function but works its way into many compartments of life. "When you put all these objects together, you suddenly see wood appearing in many different parts of Neanderthal life," the researcher stresses. "It gives us a glimpse of a Neanderthal material world that is normally almost completely invisible to us."4
Spears, pointed sticks and an enigmatic club
Among the thirteen objects, two draw the eye first: wooden spears, unearthed from Level R, the last one excavated to date. The longer measures 2.45 metres, and its shape is consistent with a thrusting spear, meant for close combat rather than throwing. The second, preserved in three fragments for a total length of 1.99 metres, presents as a broken pointed implement, discarded among other sticks, branches and a pinecone, which suggests it may have been thrown away after breaking.15
The context of the first spear is gripping. In Level R, three skulls of adult red deer, still bearing their antlers, had been laid in the same spot, surrounded by several wood imprints, including the spear itself. The presence of the antlers on the skulls indicates the stags were probably hunted in autumn or winter, which anchors the scene in a precise season. The closest parallels for these weapons are in Germany, at Schöningen, where famous wooden spears may also be the work of Neanderthals, and at Lehringen, where a spear was found lodged between the ribs of an elephant. Two other pointed pieces from Abric Romaní, around a metre long, may have served as digging sticks, though they are markedly thicker than the digging sticks identified at other Neanderthal sites.5
But the most puzzling object comes from Level P. Carved from a single piece of wood, it combines a clear handle and a thick, pointed end, so that it resembles a club. Its handle measures about sixteen centimetres, its head some fourteen centimetres tall, and its surface still bears the marks of shaping, long parallel striations left by working the wood. The handle widens slightly at its end, a detail the authors link, by ethnographic analogy, to implements designed to be held firmly in the hand during a striking or pulling motion. A sharp, right-angled step between the handle and the head would have kept the hand from sliding forward.52
The trouble is that nobody knows what this object was for, and that no known piece resembles it. The only other possible wooden club from the whole Palaeolithic comes from Kalambo Falls, in Zambia, and dates to about 400,000 years ago. "It could have been used as a hammer or striking tool, as a secondary weapon for hunting, or in interpersonal violence," Palmira Saladié offers. "We could even consider a symbolic role, perhaps as an object indicating someone's status within the group. These are possibilities, however, rather than uses we can demonstrate." Such caution is characteristic of the study, which multiplies hypotheses without ever deciding beyond what the remains allow.25
The bark trays, carrying and containing
Beyond weapons, Abric Romaní yielded a category of objects all the more moving in that it touches the intimacy of daily life: containers. Four pieces of charred bark, from Levels H and O, between thirty and fifty-five centimetres long, have been interpreted as trays or shallow receptacles. Their upper surface is concave, hollowed, as if shaped to hold and carry something.15
One of these pieces had been uncovered as early as 1990, caught in a patch of rubified travertine, that is, reddened by heat, associated with a poorly preserved combustion structure: a plate of bark found at the edge of an old hearth. Another, made of juniper rather than pine like almost all the remains at the site, has a concave upper surface with irregular edges, resembling a plate or a small scoop. The authors compare these trays to coolamons, the bark dishes that Indigenous Australian peoples use to gather food or carry infants. The analogy is appealing and speaks to the imagination: one immediately pictures a Neanderthal carrying berries, nuts or pieces of meat in a hand-cut bark bowl.5
The researchers, however, refrain from any certainty. They openly acknowledge the difficulty of distinguishing an intentionally modified bark container from a simple bark fragment detached naturally from a trunk. As with the club, the richest interpretation remains a hypothesis, offered up for discussion. This is perhaps the most remarkable feature of the work: the precise function of the objects is almost always left open, because the remains, however exceptional, never speak for themselves. They must be made to speak, with method, and one must know when to stop where the evidence stops.5
Organising space, poles, hearths and shelters
The most unexpected discovery is perhaps not an isolated object but the way wood maps out the organisation of the inhabited space. For several remains are not tools held in the hand but fixed elements, structures, arrangements of the living place. And this is probably where the Neanderthals of Abric Romaní surprise us most: they did not merely occupy the shelter, they shaped it.15
In Level N, the team spotted the imprint of a straight pole, broken at both ends, which still measures 5.10 metres and bears no branches, indicating that the twigs were deliberately removed. This pole lay at the back of the shelter, near five hearths, in an area that earlier work had read as a place for rest and sleep. Together with the back wall and two dripstone domes, it could have formed, according to the authors, a simple triangular architectural structure leaning against the rock, perhaps functioning as a windbreak or a small hut-like shelter. The idea of a Neanderthal raising an upright over five metres long to partition or protect their sleeping corner is enough to shake many a prejudice.5
Another remarkable configuration: crossed sticks, arranged above a hearthhearthA combustion structure set on the ground, evidence of the mastery of fire and a marker of how a prehistoric dwelling was organised.→, which the researchers cautiously interpret as the possible remains of a raised platform for preparing or cooking food, a kind of rack set over the fire. The sources also mention a tripod-like arrangement. Finally, piles of firewood show that Neanderthals used different methods to collect, carry and store their fuel, with reserves built up near the walls. So many clues that sketch, in the negative, a considered management of space and resources, far from the image of an improvised camp.35
The comment of Gema Chacón, co-author of the study, puts these finds in their proper perspective. What matters, she says in substance, is not so much this or that spectacular object as the repetition: wood is seen "again and again, in different archaeological levels, over thousands of years." This suggests that woodworking was in no way occasional or exceptional, that it was simply part of their technology. "We should not think about Neanderthal woodworking only in terms of a few spectacular wooden spears," she insists. The arrangement of the dwelling, more discreet than a weapon, may say even more about these humans' practical intelligence.4
Fire, fuel and Scots pine
It is impossible to speak of wood at Abric Romaní without speaking of fire, for one does not go without the other. The shelter is famous for its hearths, those occupation floors dotted with combustion structures that decades of excavation have meticulously mapped. Wood is there first and foremost a fuel, and the analyses show that Scots pine, Pinus sylvestris, was the main source of the fires. Almost all the remains at the site are in fact pine, which dovetails with the pollen data: during certain phases of the fill, pine forests very largely dominated the landscape around the shelter.56
But to reduce wood to the status of mere fuel would be to miss the essential. The fuel piles reveal differentiated procurement strategies, ranging from gathering twigs and small deadwood to carrying large trunks. In other words, the Neanderthals did not collect just anything at random: they selected, calibrated, stored according to distinct uses. A fire of twigs does not serve the same purpose as a fire fed with large logs; to light, to maintain, to cook, to heat, to give light are all needs that call for different fuels. The diversity of the piles tells of a genuine economy of wood, thought through and anticipated.15
This economy comes with another observation, more delicate to establish. Small wood chips, less than six centimetres long, appeared in eight different levels. They point to on-site shaping activity, flakes produced by cutting or retouching wooden objects. The authors remain honest, however, about the limits of this reading: it is not confirmed by the use-wearuse-wearMicro-traces left on a tool by its use, studied through use-wear analysis to reconstruct its function.→ study of the stone industry, because a white patina and water erosion have damaged the edges of the stone tools, erasing the micro-traces that might have attested woodworking. The Neanderthals of Abric Romaní also used pine resin to make certain tools, and a level of the same shelter had earlier yielded a bone spearhead designed for thrusting or throwing. Wood thus belongs to a composite technical system, in which stone, bone, resin and plant matter are intertwined.5
A material of the greatest rarity in prehistoryPrehistoryThe span of human history before the invention of writing, from the Palaeolithic to the Metal Ages, known mainly through material remains.→
To grasp the importance of Abric Romaní, one must measure how rare wood is in the deep archaeological record. Organic material is preserved only under very particular conditions, most often in waterlogged sediments that halt decay, or, as here, through mineralisation. On the scale of hundreds of thousands of years of human history, the wooden objects that have reached us fit on a short, almost intimate list that every prehistorian knows by heart.24
There is first Clacton-on-Sea, in England, and its yew spear point, recovered in 1911, over 400,000 years old: the oldest known shaped wooden object. There is above all Schöningen, in Germany, where excavators in the 1990s unearthed an exceptional set of wooden spears, some more than two metres long, shaped from carefully selected spruce and pine, with weight distribution optimised for throwing. Their age, long estimated at 300,000 years, is now debated and may be more recent, but their careful manufacture is beyond doubt. In Italy, at Poggetti Vecchi, in Tuscany, wooden tools 171,000 years old, probably boxwood digging sticks hardened by fire, were described in 2018. Further away in time and space, the site of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, in Israel, and sticks brought to light in Greece, round out this meagre corpus. Each time, or almost, these are isolated pieces, and attribution to this or that human species often remains a hypothesis.25
It is against this background of rarity that Abric Romaní shines with a particular light. Not so much through the spectacle of a single object, but through the density and continuity of the whole. Where other sites offer a snapshot, a frozen image, Abric Romaní runs a film. Wood is seen returning there, generation after generation, in functions that differ each time. This depth in time, coupled with the fineness of the natural moulds, makes it a reference site of world importance for understanding what the place of wood truly was in Middle Palaeolithic societies.4
What the wood reveals about the Neanderthals
At bottom, the contribution of Abric Romaní goes far beyond a simple inventory of objects. It touches the question that has obsessed palaeoanthropologyPalaeoanthropologyThe science that studies human evolution from the fossil remains of hominins (bones, teeth, footprints) and their context, to reconstruct our biological origins.→ since its birth: who were the NeanderthalsNeanderthalsA fossil humanity of Eurasia, robust and cold-adapted, extinct around 40,000 years before present.→ really? Long caricatured as stooped brutes, they now appear as fully human, capable of funerary practices, of ornaments, of art, and carrying a genome that still lives in us. Woodworking adds an essential stone to this edifice, for it engages precise cognitive abilities: planning, anticipating, selecting a material for a use, passing on a skill.34
To shape a thrusting spear nearly two and a half metres long, to hollow a bark tray, to raise a five-metre pole stripped of its branches, to lay sticks above a hearth: each of these acts implies an intention, a mental representation of the object before its making, and often several stages of manufacture. The Capellades site, excavated scientifically since the work of Amador Romaní in 1909, then taken up systematically from 1983 under the direction of Eudald Carbonell, and today directed by Palmira Saladié, Gema Chacón and Josep Vallverdú, is precisely where wood can be read alongside the hearths, the animal bones and the MousterianMousterianThe stone-tool industry typical of Neanderthals, based on the Levallois flaking technique.→ stone tools. This cross-reading restores a part of the Neanderthal world that most sites have lost forever.36
What remains is the lesson in caution, which is also a lesson in scientific humility. The authors never stop recalling the limits of their interpretations. The club may not be a club; the trays may not all be containers; the pole may have had another purpose. This is not a weakness, it is rigour itself. "Perhaps the simplest message is that the Palaeolithic was not a world made only of stone," concludes Josep Vallverdú. "We tend to imagine prehistoric people through the things archaeologists find, and that can be misleading. Stone survives. Wood usually doesn't. So there is an enormous part of their material world that we almost never get to see." At Abric Romaní, for once, that invisible part has risen back to the surface, moulded in stone, and it brings us a little closer to these other humans.41
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