page_title: Schöningen spears
section_title: Discovery and location
hierarchical_section_title: Schöningen spears / Discovery and location
caption_attribution_description: English: Moon Lake shoreline in Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba
context_page_description: The Schöningen spears are a set of eight wooden throwing spears from the Palaeolithic Age that were excavated between 1994 and 1998 in the open-cast lignite mine in Schöningen, Helmstedt district, Germany, together with an associated cache of approximately 16,000 animal bones. The excavations took place under the management of Hartmut Thieme of the Lower Saxony State Service for Cultural Heritage.
  Originally assessed as being between 380,000 and 400,000 years old, they represent the oldest completely preserved hunting weapons of prehistoric Europe so far discovered.
  As such they predate the age of Neanderthal Man, and are associated with Homo heidelbergensis.
  The spears support the practice of hunting by archaic humans in Europe in the late Lower Paleolithic.
  The age of the spears was estimated from their stratigraphic position, "sandwiched between deposits of the Elsterian and Saalian glaciations, and situated within a well-studied sedimentary sequence." More recently, thermoluminescence dating of heated flints in a deposit beneath that which contained the spears suggested that the spears were between 337,000 and 300,000 years old.
context_section_description: The site of the finds (Schöningen 13/II sedimentary sequence 4) is one of 13 Palaeolithic places of discovery in the open-cast, lignite mine (working area, south) that was excavated in the course of the prospection of the quaternary surface layer from 1992 to 2009.
  The 60 by 50 m (200 by 160 ft) excavation base that was excluded from coal mining represents a small segment of a former littoral zone. This zone has been visited over millennia, between the Elster- and Saale ice ages, by humans and animals alike. The pedestal displays five massive, layered sediment packages that were created by varying levels of the lake and silting-up processes.
  Thanks to the quick, airtight covering of the archaeological layers by mud, the organic materials are exceptionally well preserved. In the sequence of the sedimentary layers, climate changes can be read with a high resolution – from a warm, dry phase to airy deciduous forests to tundra. The spears themselves are from an approximately 10 m (32.81 ft) wide and 50 m (164.04 ft) long strip, parallel to the former lake shore in the sedimentary layer four, the late Holstein-interglacial. The archaeological layers beneath have only been partially excavated and have been an objective of a research excavation by the DFG (German Research Association) since 2010.
  Together with the spears, some stone artifacts, chips as well as over 10,000 animal bones were found, which were 90% horse bones, followed by red deer and European bison. The horse bones come from Equus mosbachensis and are indicative of at least 20 individuals. They show numerous cut marks made by stone tools, but only a few bite marks made by animals. The site is interpreted by the excavator Harald Thieme as testimony of a hunting event as well as the following cutting up and preparation of the kill. According to his scenario, the thick reeds at the lake shore gave the hunters cover, from where the horses, trapped between the hunters and the lake, were culled with accurate spear throws. Because there are bones of young animals among the horse bones, he concludes that the hunt took place in autumn. Furthermore, he sees evidence of ritualistic activity, because the spears were left behind.
caption: The littoral zone of a lake
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