Digging stick
The digging stick , also known as the Wühlstock , is one of the oldest tools , which usually consists of a wooden stick , one end of which is sharpened or pointed.
Digging sticks were and are used by people at the hunter-gatherer culture level to dig up nutritious roots , tubers , onions and rhizomes from the earth.
Digging sticks are much older than agriculture . The earliest finds are older than 200,000 years. Since wood does not keep well in the ground for a long time, it cannot be ruled out that this tool was used much earlier. A site in Italy from 171,000 years ago shows that Neanderthals also used fire-hardened grave sticks made from boxwood , oak , juniper and ash .
Grave sticks are usually about a meter long. The tip can be made in a number of ways and is sometimes fire hardened. Sometimes a stone disk is attached to the upper part of the digging stick in order to increase the weight and thus the pressure.
With the advent of agriculture, during the so-called Neolithic Revolution , the digging stick became an agricultural tool . The digging stick is used to make holes in which cuttings are placed, or to break up small clods of earth and dig up roots. In addition, hook-shaped digging sticks ( hacking ) also developed .
In some areas it was initially wooden spade replaced, or from devices such as Sauzahn , hoe (hoe), Karst , Krail , earth pimples and the like, are due to hook-shaped grave sticks. In agriculture, his mechanical successor for loosening and turning the earth was the plow or the cultivator .
Individual evidence
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↑ Biancamaria Aranguren u. a .: Wooden tools and fire technology in the early Neanderthal site of Poggetti Vecchi (Italy). In: PNAS . Online advance publication of February 5, 2018, doi: 10.1073 / pnas.1716068115
Could these be the oldest Neandertal tools made with fire? On: sciencemag.org of February 5, 2018. - ↑ Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon (1920), Volume III, pp. 715 ff. [1]