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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchA systematic study of 187 worked wooden artifacts from Germany’s Schöningen Spear Horizon documents a range of woodworking techniques, including splitting. The objects show deliberate manufacture, but their makers are not identified by the artifacts themselves: a 2025 study proposed a younger age that makes Neanderthal involvement plausible, while the revised chronology remains debated.
What was found at Schöningen?
The Spear Horizon is an archaeological layer at Schöningen, Germany, known for preserved wooden hunting equipment. In 2024, researchers published a systematic study of 187 worked wooden artifacts from the site, examining an assemblage rather than focusing on a single celebrated spear. Their paper places the collection in the broader story of human evolution and describes a wide range of woodworking evidence. Read the 2024 study in PNAS.
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Wood rarely survives in Paleolithic archaeological deposits, so a collection of this size offers an unusual opportunity to examine how people shaped and worked it. The study reports tool types and a woodworking technique not previously reported from Paleolithic contexts. That does not mean the function of every artifact is known, or that the collection represents all prehistoric woodworking.
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The case rests on the range of worked objects and traces of manufacture, not simply on the presence of finished spears. Researchers report multiple woodworking techniques, including splitting. Together, the artifacts document people deliberately transforming wood through more than one kind of process.
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Those observations support describing the assemblage as evidence of skilled woodworking. They do not establish that every object was made in the same way, that every object’s purpose can be identified, or how widespread these techniques were among ancient populations.
What can one double-pointed stick tell us?
A double-pointed wooden stick from Schöningen illustrates how analysis can inform a tool’s possible purpose. A separate 2023 study used micro-CT, 3D microscopy and other methods to examine its shape and manufacturing traces. The authors interpret it as a likely hunting throwing stick, but that is a functional interpretation—not direct evidence of how it was used. Read the 2023 study in PLOS ONE.
The researchers also discuss possible seasoning as a way to reduce cracking and warping. This is a proposed part of the manufacturing process, rather than a directly witnessed step.
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How old are the Schöningen artifacts?
Many accounts have described the Spear Horizon as about 300,000 years old. In a 2025 paper, Hutson and colleagues used amino-acid geochronology on fossils obtained directly from the find-bearing deposits and proposed an age of about 200,000 years instead. Their paper presents this as a revised chronology, not an uncontested date. Read the 2025 study in Science Advances.
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The proposed age matters because it changes the archaeological context in which the wooden tools are interpreted. The authors connect it with Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals and communal hunting. The date and its implications, however, remain a scholarly interpretation: archaeologist Thomas Terberger told the Associated Press, “For the moment, I find the arguments interesting, but not absolutely convincing.” Read the Associated Press report.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Were the tools made by Neanderthals?
Neanderthal makers are plausible under the younger chronology proposed in 2025, but the finds do not identify who made each artifact. The 2024 study establishes the worked-wood assemblage and its manufacturing evidence; the later dating study offers a new age and an interpretation of the people and hunting context associated with it. Those are related claims, but they are not the same kind of evidence.
The careful conclusion is that Schöningen provides strong evidence for sophisticated woodworking at the Spear Horizon. Neanderthal involvement is a possibility supported by the revised age proposal, not a settled attribution for the artifacts.
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