The now-famous Schöningen site, situated in the northern European Plains, has completely revised our understanding of early human tactical ingenuity and technological advancement. Excavations at this former open-cast mine, starting in 1981, have revealed an assemblage of Middle Pleistocene artifacts, including the oldest known wooden artifacts. Of these, the ten spears and two double-pointed sticks-DPS or throwing sticks-from Schöningen 13 II-4 are the most prominent, completely changing the hunter vs. scavenger debate.
The Schöningen 13 II-4 site former interglacial lakeshore dates from circa 337,000 to 300,000 years. Because lake level fluctuations and low-energy fluviatile sediments created exceptional preservation conditions at Schöningen, hundreds of wooden artifacts survive, which makes the site a very favorable location for studying early human behavior and woodworking techniques. These early wooden hunting weapons have provided unprecedented insight into the hunting prowess, social dynamics, and mental capabilities of early humans.
Evidence for human woodworking started about 2 to 1.5 million years ago, based on indirect evidence for use-wear on lithics. Direct evidence for wood artifacts extends to 780,000 years ago in Africa and the Middle East. The Schöningen spears can be dated to between 400,000 and 120,000 years ago and represent the earliest known wooden spears in Europe. These weapons have reshaped our understanding of early human hunting strategies, showing that early humans were not just scavengers but rather skilled hunters capable of coordinated social interaction and planning.
It was discovered in 1992 through rescue excavations due to lignite open-cast mining and has since then been systematically excavated by the Lower Saxony State Office of Cultural Heritage (NLD) and, since 2008, in cooperation with the Eberhard Karls University Tübingen and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (SHEP). The sites have provided the best-preserved and oldest hunting weapons in the world, allowing unique insights into the hunting behavior, cognition, and social organization of early humans.
The Schöningen spears are a series of nine spears, two throwing sticks, and a lance that rank among the most important testimonies to human early hunting capabilities. These tools are witness to the fact that early humans-like Homo heidelbergensis or Homo neanderthalensis were capable of active hunting, including coordinated social interaction and complex planning. Until recently, one could believe that such complex abilities were limited to modern humans.
The technological assemblage of the Schöningen hunting tools came on the scene when Homo heidelbergensis was already well-established in Europe and while Neanderthals and modern humans were anatomically beginning to develop. Because effective hunting technologies were spread across human species and population boundaries, the successful expansion of the various human species through the course of the Pleistocene was greatly allowed. Schöningen stands as an exceptional example of this technological and cognitive exchange.
Until the finding of the Schöningen spears, the long-standing debate had denied active large game hunting to Neanderthals and other human species before Homo sapiens, being considered as simple scavengers. The paradigm change that is the so-called Schöningeneffect has revised the socio-cognitive, linguistic, and technological abilities of Pleistocene humans and made them more similar to modern humans.
Thus far, the discoveries from Schöningen have yielded the oldest evidence of complex hunting technologies and behavior in Pleistocene hunter-gatherer societies. This archaeological evidence shows that Homo heidelbergensis was an effective hunter of the North Eurasian Plain. This technological expertise for crafting efficient hunting weapons and expertise socially organized hunting behavior had been passed on sustainably from generation to generation and thus assured the survival of early humans throughout the Ice Age in Eurasia.
The Schöningen site is a unique example of early human ingenuity, tactical mastery, and technological innovation. The hunting weapons and artifacts, which are uniquely preserved, form an extremely rare window into the lifeways of Pleistocene hunter-gatherer societies, thus changing our perception of early human species and their capabilities.