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A 2024 study identified 187 worked wooden artifacts at Schöningen’s Spear Horizon, including evidence of several woodworking techniques. The assemblage offers a rare view of how prehistoric people shaped wood—not just the finished tools they left behind. A 2025 study proposes that the deposits are about 200,000 years old, making Neanderthal involvement plausible, but the revised date and the identity of the makers remain subjects of debate.
What was found at Schöningen?
The Spear Horizon, formally identified as Schöningen 13 II-4, is known for its wooden hunting equipment. A systematic study published in 2024 examined a much broader collection from the site: 187 worked wooden artifacts. The authors describe the assemblage as an unusually extensive record of woodworking, rather than a discovery centered on one exceptional spear. Leder et al., PNAS, 2024
Wood rarely survives in Paleolithic archaeological deposits, so the preserved objects offer evidence that stone tools alone cannot provide: traces of how people selected and worked a material that was both useful and perishable. The study reports a range of woodworking techniques, including splitting, as well as tool types and a technique not previously reported from Paleolithic contexts. That novelty concerns the study’s reported categories and technique; it does not mean Schöningen contains the first prehistoric wooden tools ever discovered.
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What makes the artifacts evidence of woodworking skill?
The case rests on the assemblage’s variety and the physical evidence of manufacture. The researchers examined worked objects and the traces left by shaping them, documenting multiple techniques rather than treating each artifact as an isolated curiosity. Splitting is especially informative because it shows wood being deliberately separated and prepared, not simply picked up in a naturally useful shape.
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These findings support describing the makers as skilled woodworkers: they could work wood in more than one way and produce a varied set of objects. They do not establish the purpose of every artifact, or prove that every object was made for hunting. The study’s broader significance is that it brings manufacturing evidence into view alongside recognizable finished tools.
What can one double-pointed stick tell us?
A double-pointed wooden stick from Schöningen illustrates how detailed analysis can refine an object’s likely function. In a separate 2023 study, researchers used micro-CT, 3D microscopy and other analytical methods to examine the object and its manufacturing traces. They interpreted it as a likely hunting throwing stick. Milks et al., PLOS ONE, 2023
The proposed function is an interpretation, not direct evidence of how the stick was used. The paper also discusses whether seasoning the wood may have helped reduce cracking and warping; that, too, is a possible manufacturing practice rather than a confirmed step in the object’s production.
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Neanderthals are a plausible attribution under a revised dating proposal, but no study cited here identifies the maker of each artifact. The 2025 authors connect their proposed chronology to a Middle Paleolithic context associated with Neanderthals and communal hunting. That makes the title’s attribution reasonable as a possibility, not a demonstrated fact about every object. Hutson et al., Science Advances, 2025
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The distinction matters: the artifacts show that people at Schöningen worked wood, while the proposed age helps frame who those people may have been. It does not supply a direct identification of the individuals or population responsible for the tools.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How old is the Schöningen Spear Horizon?
For years, the finds were commonly described as about 300,000 years old. In 2025, Hutson and colleagues used amino-acid geochronology on fossils recovered directly from the find-bearing deposits and proposed an age of about 200,000 years—a substantial revision to the familiar estimate. This is a published proposal based on a specific dating method, not a settled, timeless figure. Hutson et al., Science Advances, 2025
The implications remain open to discussion. The Associated Press reported that University of Göttingen archaeologist Thomas Terberger called the arguments “interesting, but not absolutely convincing” and said more research was needed. His reservation underscores why the younger date, and the Neanderthal interpretation it makes more plausible, should be presented with qualification. Associated Press, 2025
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What the evidence establishes—and what it does not
- Established by the 2024 assemblage study: 187 worked wooden artifacts and evidence for a range of woodworking techniques, including splitting.
- Supported as an interpretation: a separately analyzed double-pointed stick was likely a hunting throwing stick.
- Proposed in 2025: amino-acid geochronology supports an age of about 200,000 years rather than the often-repeated estimate of about 300,000.
- Not established: the identity of the maker of each artifact, the function of every object, or how common woodworking was among Neanderthals as a whole.
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