Butchered horses, spears and tools show extent of ancient hunting culture

Spear VII, Schoningen, found in 1997. Image: By P. Pfarr NLD. therocksremain.org

 
Ancient spears and the butchered remains of horses recovered from a paleolithic site in Germany show an elaborate hunting culture among humans 300,000 years ago.

A series of research papers published online in the Journal of Human Evolution delve into what appears to have been a hunting hub for the ancient humans who used the area – most likely early Neanderthals or Homo heidelbergensis. The site was most probably on the shoreline of an ancient lake in north-central Germany.

The Schöningen site, on the edge of an open-cast mine, has provided archaeologists with a wealth of ancient offerings, including at least 10 carefully made wooden spears and 12,000 animal bones. The remains of up to 25 horses have drawn particular interest, with bone marks indicating they were butchered. One horse pelvis even had a spear protruding from it.

The site has also yielded 1500 stone artifacts. [...] Horsetalk.co.nz


Actualización: Archaeologists long underestimated early hominins
Hominins of the Lower Paleolithic are much more like modern humans than was previously thought. By 300,000 years ago, Homo heidelbergensis in Schöningen used highly sophisticated weapons and tools. The hominins at Schöningen lived in social groups that practiced coordinated group hunting, a division of labor, and were able to communication about the past, present and future. These are cultural traits that archaeologists typically attribute to modern humans. The excavations in the open-cast coal mine in Schöningen running from 1994 until today show that we have long underestimated the cultural capacities of Homo heidelbergensis. Schöningen is a key site for documenting both a high resolution record of past climatic change and how hominins lived in northern Europe during the Ice Age. Since 2008 Professor Nicholas Conard and Dr. Jordi Serangeli of the University of Tübingen have led the excavations with a major international research team in close cooperation with the Cultural Heritage Office of Lower Saxony.

A landmark special issue of the leading international publication Journal of Human Evolution presents all of the results from the long-research excavation in Schöningen...