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A Boxgrove Breakthrough
The tool comes from the famous Boxgrove locality near Chichester, a site celebrated for exceptionally preserved evidence of Lower Palaeolithic life, including finely made Acheulean handaxes and butchered animal remains, explains The Independent. Researchers say the 11cm-long bone piece was initially catalogued but only recently re-examined in detail, when 3D scanning and electron microscopy exposed distinctive pitting, scoring and embedded flint fragments consistent with tool use. The finding have just been released in a Science Advances report.
In a statement released with the new research, lead author Simon Parfitt said the find highlights the “ingenuity and resourcefulness” of the toolmaker, noting that elephants and mammoths were uncommon locally, so the bone was likely “a tool of considerable value.”
The Boxgrove archaeological site from the 1990s when the elephant bone tool was excavated. (Boxgrove Project, UCL via NHM)
How elephant bone became a “soft hammer” for stone tools
According to the team’s analysis, the artifact functioned as a retoucher or soft hammer - struck against the edge of a stone tool to detach small flakes and restore a sharp, controlled cutting edge. This discovery is important because Boxgrove handaxes are known for their technical refinement, and the paper argues that organic knapping tools (bone, antler, wood) were essential but rarely survive in the archaeological record.
Co-author Dr Silvia Bello of the Natural History Museum said the tool’s collection, shaping and repeated use signals “an advanced level of complex thinking and abstract thought,” because it shows deliberate selection of material and understanding of how best to use it.
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One of the handaxes discovered by archaeological excavation at Boxgrove. (Midnightblueowl/CC BY-SA 3.0)
Why this matters for early human skill in northern Europe
Elephant remains at Boxgrove are described as “exceptionally rare” in the scientific paper, which makes the choice of elephant bone especially striking: it implies either long-distance acquisition, careful curation, or opportunistic recovery from a carcass beyond the main activity area. The researchers also suggest the bone was shaped while still “green” (fresh), based on how it fractured and deformed under use, hinting the tool may have been made not long after the animal died.
The study also sits within a broader reassessment of what early Europeans could do. Boxgrove is already linked to early humans often discussed as Homo heidelbergensis (or closely related populations), and Ancient Origins has previously covered how the site’s fossils and technology tie Britain into a wider Middle Pleistocene story.
Top image: Elephant-bone knapping tool from Boxgrove, West Sussex. Source: Natural Histoty Museum
By Gary Manners
References
Bello, S. 2026. Prehistoric tool made from elephant bone is the oldest discovered in Europe. Available at: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/press-office/press-releases/prehistoric-tool-made-from-elephant-bone-is-the-oldest-discovere.html
Parfitt, S. 2026. Prehistoric tool made from elephant bone is the oldest discovered in Europe. Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2026/jan/prehistoric-tool-made-elephant-bone-oldest-discovered-europe
Parfitt, S., & Bello, S. 2026. The earliest elephant-bone tool from Europe: An unexpected raw material for precision knapping of Acheulean handaxes. Available at: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ady1390
Wootton-Cane, N., 2026. ‘Remarkable’ prehistoric elephant bone tool is oldest in Europe, archaeologists reveal. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/elephant-bone-tool-hammer-archaeology-england-b2904061.html
