Digging stick

The grave floor, also Wühlstock, is one of the oldest tools, usually consisting only of a wooden stick is sharpened or pointed one end of which.

Grave sticks were and are used by people on the level of culture of hunters and gatherers for digging nutritious roots, tubers, bulbs and rhizomes from the soil.

Grave poles are therefore much older than agriculture. The earliest finds of such sticks are from the period of 200,000 years ago. Grave poles should probably be even older, there are just no known grave older canes because of the very perishable material wood.

Grave sticks are usually only about a meter long. The tip can be made in different ways and sometimes hardened by fire. Sometimes, a block plate is mounted in the upper part of the stick grave, so as to increase the weight and thus the pressure.

With advent of agriculture, while the so-called Neolithic Revolution, the grave floor was for farming equipment. The grave Stock is used for making holes, be put in the cuttings, or for wrapping small clods and for digging roots. In addition, also hook-shaped grave poles ( hoe ) develop.

In some areas it was replaced by first wooden spade, or from devices such as Sauzahn, hoe ( hoe ), Karst, Krail, Erdpickel and the like, which go back to hook-shaped grave poles. In field crops be mechanized was succeeded in loosening and turning over the soil, the plow or cultivator ( cultivator ).