The world’s oldest complete wooden hunting weapons are 200,000 years old, not 300,000 as previously thought. This is demonstrated by new dating by an international research team, including Lund Luminescence Lab and ArchLab member Zoran Perić at Lund University. The discovery indicates that the spears originate from Neanderthals, deepening our understanding of their complex social behaviours.
In the mid-1990s, nine wooden spears were discovered in a coal mine in Schöningen, Germany, along with the remains of 50 horses. Previous dating was based on over- and underlying sediment layers and was uncertain. Now, researchers using several dating methods, including optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and amino acid racemization, have determined that the spears are approximately 200,000 years old.
“Our results provide a refined chronological framework that can be used to study the development of complex behaviours such as group hunting in early humans. They can serve as a reference for dating other archaeological sites in Europe,” says Zoran Perić, geology researcher at Lund University and responsible for evaluating the luminescence data from the Schöningen site.
The study, published in Science Advances, strengthens the theory that Neanderthals were capable of sophisticated, cooperative hunting. This supports the view of Neanderthals as intelligent and adaptable.
Despite the new dating, the Schöningen spears are still the world’s oldest complete wooden spears.
Read the full story in Science Advances: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adv0752
Lund University swedish press release: Ny datering visar att världens äldsta bevarade spjut användes av neandertalare | Lunds universitet
Image: Wooden spears from Schöningen. Photo by E. Behrens, C.S. Fuchs, Niedersächsisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Germany.