The Schöningen site in the northern European Plains turns our present knowledge of early human warfare and hunting strategies upside down. Excavations started in 1981 on this former opencast mine exposed multiple Middle Pleistocene sites with the oldest wooden tools known to humankind. Among them were ten spears and two DPS or throwing sticks, which have somewhat changed the hunter vs. scavenger debate.
Site 13 II-4 from Schöningen is situated in the deposits of a former interglacial lakeshore and dates to 337,000-300,000 years ago, which corresponds to Marine Isotope Stage 9. This unusually good preservation of wooden artifacts is due to fluctuations in lake level and accompanying low-energy fluviatile sediments that opened a unique window into the early human behavioral and technological spectrum of wood processing. Hundreds of natural and worked wood remains make this site exceptionally good for the study of early wooden artifacts and early human behavior related to working with wood.
Earlier findings of early wooden hunting weapons, like spears and throwing sticks, revolutionized the earlier ideas concerning the ability of early humans to hunt, their social interaction, and hominin cognition. The earliest European wooden spears can be dated around 400,000-120,000 years and were recovered from Schöningen. The site has also yielded the earliest known throwing sticks; later possible examples have come from Africa. These discoveries have given direct evidence of early human hunting technologies and their part in establishing humans at the top of the food chain.
The Schöningen site has been dated to circa 300,000 years ago and was occupied by Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, probably Homo heidelbergensis or Homo neanderthalensis. This was due to the rapid sedimentation at the lakeside location, which ensured that the organic materials artifacts, bones, insect remains, and pollen were especially well preserved. The site yielded the best-preserved and oldest hunting weapons anywhere in the world, affording unparalleled insights into past human hunting behavior, cognition, social behavior, and the lifeways of Pleistocene hunter-gatherer societies.
The discovery of nine spears, two throwing sticks, and one lance, which was quite outstanding in attesting to the ability of early humans to hunt actively, is called the Schöningen spears. These weapons represent coordinated social interaction and associated planning skills, previously ascribed only to modern humans. This site has fundamentally changed our perception of the Pleistocene human species concerning socio-cultural ability, cognition, and technological expertise.
The technological assembly of the Schöningen hunting weapons took place in an age when Homo heidelbergensis had already emerged in Europe, and the Neanderthals and modern humans, Homo sapiens, were beginning their anatomic development. In the Pleistocene, the effective expansion of distinct human species was grounded on the dispersion of effective hunting technologies across species and population boundaries of humans. Schöningen represents an outstanding example of this technological and social exchange.
Until the discovery of the Schöningen spears, a long-standing research debate denied Neanderthals and other human species before Homo sapiens the ability to hunt large game. This paradigm shift set the stage for the reinterpretation of the socio-cognitive, linguistic, and technological abilities of Pleistocene humans to be far closer to that of modern humans. The Schöningen effect has changed our view of early humans in fundamental ways.
Schöningen has yielded the oldest evidence for complex hunting technologies and behavior in Pleistocene hunter-gatherer societies. Archaeological data indicate that Homo heidelbergensis was an effective hunter of the North Eurasian Plain. The technological know-how to manufacture efficient hunting weapons as well as the knowledge of socially organized hunting behavior were passed on sustainably from generation to generation. This may have even included knowledge transfer across species, helping Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens alike.
Thus, the intentional selection of thick, hard tree trunks of conifers and the invested effortful workmanship in its making also attests to a long-standing tradition in early woodworking technology. Schoningen provides a singular example of early traditions of woodworking and testifies to an exceptional example of the traditional hunter-gatherer way of life. The site constitutes an exceptional testimony to the traditional use of land by an early human community and has outstanding values for landscape archaeology.