ArticleScience advances2025
Revised age for Schöningen hunting spears indicates intensification of Neanderthal cooperative behavior around 200,000 years ago.
Article in Science advances, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Homo sapiens, industrialisation and the environmental mismatch hypothesis.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Faunal exploitation at the elephant hunting site of Lehringen, Germany, 125,000 years ago.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Evidence for the earliest hominin use of wooden handheld tools found at Marathousa 1 (Greece).Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Mitochondrial genomes of Middle Pleistocene horses from the open-air site complex of Schöningen.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Quaternary aminostratigraphies for the eastern North European Plain.Open research Europe · 2025Article
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15 authors.
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Abstract
The Schöningen 13II-4 archaeological site in Germany holds title to the most complete Paleolithic wooden hunting spears ever discovered, yet its age has never been properly settled. Initial estimates placed the site at around 400,000 years; this age was later revised to roughly 300,000 years. Here, we report age estimates for the "Spear Horizon" based on amino acid geochronology of fossils obtained directly from the find-bearing deposits. Together with a reassessment of regional Middle Pleistocene chronostratigraphy, these data place the Schöningen spears at ~200,000 years. This revised age positions the Spear Horizon alongside other sites that collectively record a shift toward communal hunting strategies. The Schöningen archaeological record exemplifies this behavioral transformation that arose within the increasingly complex social environments of Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals.
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