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 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.”
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…
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