An analysis of a 300,000-year-old double-pointed wooden stick from the Middle Pleistocene site of Schöningen, Germany, shows it was scraped, seasoned and sanded before being used to kill animals.
The 300,000-year-old double-pointed wooden stick at the site of Schöningen in Germany. Image credit: Peter Pfarr.
The site of Schöningen in Germany, dated to approximately 300,000 years ago, yielded the earliest large-scale record of humanly-made wooden tools.
These include wooden spears and shorter double-pointed sticks, discovered in association with herbivores that were hunted and butchered along a lakeshore.
Wooden tools have not been systematically analysed to the same standard as other Paleolithic technologies, such as stone or bone tools.
“Discoveries of wooden tools have revolutionised our understanding of early human behaviors,” said University of Reading researcher Dr. Annemieke Milks.
“Amazingly these early humans demonstrated an ability to plan well in advance, a strong knowledge of the properties of wood, and many sophisticated woodworking skills that we still use today.”
“These lightweight throwing sticks may have been easier to launch than heavier spears, indicating the potential for the whole community to take part.”
“Such tools could have been used by children while learning to throw and hunt.”
“The Schöningen humans used a spruce branch to make this aerodynamic and ergonomic tool,” said Dr. Dirk Leder, a researcher with the Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage.
“The woodworking involved multiple steps including cutting and stripping off the bark, carving it into an aerodynamic shape, scraping away more of the surface, seasoning the wood to avoid cracking and warping, and sanding it for easier handling.”
An artist’s impression of Homo heidelbergensis hunting birds. Image credit: Benoit Clarys.
The 77-cm-long stick double-pointed wooden stick examined by the team was found in 1994 at the Schöningen 13 II-4 site.
The artifact was most likely used by early humans to hunt medium-sized game like red and roe deer, and possibly fast-small prey including hare and birds that were otherwise difficult to catch.
The throwing sticks would have been thrown rotationally — similar to a boomerang — rather than overhead like a modern-day javelin and may have enabled early humans to throw as far as 30 m.
Although lightweight, the high velocities at which such weapons can be launched could have resulted in deadly high-energy impacts.
The fine surface, carefully shaped points and polish from handling suggest this was a piece of personal kit with repeated use, rather than a quickly made tool that was carelessly discarded.
“The systematic analysis of the wooden finds of the Schöningen site financed by German Research Foundation provides valuable new insights and further exciting information on these early wooden weapons can be expected soon,” said Dr. Thomas Terberger, a researcher with the Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage and the University of Göttingen.
The findings were published in the journal PLoS ONE.
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A. Milks et al. 2023. A double-pointed wooden throwing stick from Schöningen, Germany: Results and new insights from a multianalytical study. PLoS ONE 18 (7): e0287719; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287719
