What is it about?
Wooden tools of the early Stone Age rarely survive in the archaeological record limiting our understanding of past hunter-gather lifeways. With almost 200 wooden artifacts, the 300,000 years-old site of Schöningen in Germany provides the largest assemblage worldwide. Wooden tools include at least 10 spears and seven throwing sticks used in hunting next to 35 newly recognized pointed and rounded split woods likely used in domestic activities. The study provides unique insights into Stone Age woodworking techniques, tool design, use, re-working, and human behavior connected to wooden artifacts. Human evolution studies show increasing brain size and technological complexity that coincide with human group hunting over the last 2 million years. Schöningen’s wooden hunting weapons exemplify the interplay of technological complexity, human behavior, and human evolution.
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Why is it important?
The wooden aretafacts display an unexpected level of planning depth and technological expertise. In compariosn to stone tools of similar age, these tools were more advanced and add to the picture of sophisticated hominins before the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe.
Perspectives
It is fascinating to see how standardised and well planned these wooden tools were, at avery early time. Likewise, it is unforntunate that only a handful of Stone Age sites have any wooden artefacts preserved at all as this would open up further venues for the interpretation of human cognitive abilities in the deep past.
Dirk Leder
Niedersächsisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The wooden artifacts from Schöningen’s Spear Horizon and their place in human evolution, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, April 2024, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2320484121.
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