this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

We had shovels in the stone age.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Depends what you mean by shovel. Little wooden scoops/spades might have been a thing, although hands will work nearly as well on soft substances. For bigger jobs the digging stick was the tool of choice, and then baskets to move the rubble or economic load (ocher, tubers) out.

I'm guessing multi-piece wooden shovels, if they were ever commonly used, had to wait for some level of civilisation. That's a very difficult thing to make with no proper tools, and not trivial even with. Ditto for bone, and nothing else available in nature is strong and rigid enough under bending.