Schöninger Speere

The Schöningen Spears, eight wooden throwing spears from the Palaeolithic Age and an associated cache of approximately 16,000 animal bones were excavated under the management of Dr. Hartmut Thieme of Lower Saxony State Service for Cultural Heritage (NLD) between 1994 and 1998 in the open-cast lignite mine, Schöningen, county Helmstedt district, Germany. Between 380,000 and 400,000 years old, they represent the oldest completely preserved hunting weapons of prehistoric Europe so far discovered, have helped to support the thesis of active hunt by Homo heidelbergensis and have provided new nuances in the image of cultural and social development of early humans.

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 that has been visited over millennia between the Elster- and Saale ice age 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.

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