Schöningen Spears

The Schöningen spears are a set of ten Palaeolithic wooden weapons that were excavated between 1994 and 1999 from the 'Spear Horizon' in the open-cast lignite mine in Schöningen, Helmstedt district, Germany. The spears are among the oldest hunting weapons yet discovered and were found together with animal bones and stone and bone tools. Being used by the oldest known group of human hunters, they provided unique proof that early human ancestors were much closer to modern humans in both complex social structure and technical ability than thought previously. The excavations at the Schöningen site took place under the management of Hartmut Thieme of the Lower Saxony State Service for Cultural Heritage (NLD). The age of the spears, originally assessed as being between 380,000 and 400,000 years old during Marine Isotope Stage 11, was estimated from their stratigraphic position in the site, 'sandwiched between deposits of the Elsterian and Saalian glaciations, and situated within a well-studied sedimentary sequence'. However, more recently, thermoluminescence dating of heated flints in a deposit beneath that which contained the spears, dates the spears to between 337,000 and 300,000 years old, placing them at the end of the interglacial Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 9, and recent scholarship has tended to support an MIS 9 date for the spears. However, a 2025 study suggested an even young

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