One of the oldest tools of agriculture, a digging implement consisting of a blade set at right angles to a long handle (haft). Early hoes had stone or wooden blades. Examples made from antler go back to the Mesolithic. Most early hoes were used by the farming peoples of the Neolithic. Hoes succeeded the digging stick and gave rise to the plow. The digging stick, precursor of most agricultural hand tools, was simply a sharpened branch sometimes weighted with a stone.