Duvensee paddle  The Duvensee paddles is the preserved part of a Mesolithic spade paddle, which was found during archaeological excavations of a Mesolithic dwelling area at Duvensee near Klinkrade (Herzogtum Lauenburg) Schleswig-Holstein, Germany in 1926. After a paddle from Star Carr in England, the Duvensee paddle is the second oldest known paddle and is considered among the earliest evidence for the use of water transport in the Mesolithic. The find is in the permanent exhibition of the Archaeological Museum Hamburg in Harburg, Hamburg. The former bog Duvenseer Moor was located west of the village Duvensee in a young drift landscape. The area, of from north to south and from east to west, originally was an open, shallow lake which gradually developed to a marsh. From the late 18th century, the marsh was drained by ditches to make usable for agriculture. The peat of the bog was cut for fuel. By the early 19th century only a small body of open water remained, which was eventually completely drained. In 1923 the geologist Karl Gripp discovered by chance a Mesolithic settlement site while mapping the Duvenseer Moor. In the following years, the site was archaeologically investigated. Archaeologists Gustav Schwantes (1924–1927), 1946 Hermann Schwabedissen (1946) and finally Klaus Bokelmann (1966–1967) excavated the bog and documented many dwelling places. Besides numerous stone artifacts, the excavations provided only very few wooden tools, including the paddle found by Schwantes in 1926, located in a former bank zone near a residential area. The Duvensee paddle, found at , is one of the most outstanding finds from the Duvenseer Moor. The paddle was found broken into several pieces, but except for a few flaws was extremely well preserved. The excellent preservation status of the paddle's wood was caused by a very low level of oxygen in the lake's humid sediments that quickly covered the paddle, which subsequently kept the growth of micro organisms to a minimum. Under normal oxygen conditions, fungi, bacteria, and insects would have caused a biological degradation of the wood in short time. Only the end of the handle is missing and a corner of the paddle's leaf (blade) is broken off. The paddle has a length of , a width of and a thickness of . The leaf has a long rectangular shape with widely rounded corners, having a length of about and an asymmetric connection to the shaft.