🪵 Before stone, our ancestors were master woodworkers. At Schöningen in Lower Saxony, a coal mine site preserving an ancient lakeshore, archaeologists found dozens of butchered horse bones, 20+ hunting weapons and 35 split-wood domestic tools dated to ~200,000 years ago — and the video attributes them to early Neanderthals, not Homo sapiens. Even older: structural woodworking in Zambia at 476,000 years, wooden tools in Greece at 430,000, and a modified plank ~780,000 years old in Israel. And in 1939 near Ulm, ~200 mammoth ivory fragments were pieced into a 31 cm lion-man figurine — redated to ~40,000 years old in 2013. Maybe "Wood Age" fits better 🦁
Neanderthal wooden tools and a 40,000-year-old lion-man figurine rewrite early woodworking
Key facts
- In the 1990s, discoveries at Schöningen, a coal mining site in Lower Saxony, Germany, preserved an ancient lakeshore where people hunted and processed kills.
- At Schöningen, archaeologists found bones of dozens of butchered horses, evidence of at least 20 hunting weapons including spears, and 35 tools made from split wood likely used for domestic purposes.
- The video states that the Schöningen wooden tools date to approximately 200,000 years ago and were made by early Neanderthals rather than Homo sapiens, showing woodworking skills predating modern humans.
- Evidence of structural woodworking dated to 476,000 years ago was found in Zambia, wooden tools dated to 430,000 years ago in Greece, and a modified wooden plank dated to roughly 780,000 years ago in modern-day Israel.
- Archaeological excavations in 1939 at a cave near Ulm, Germany, uncovered around 200 intentionally carved mammoth ivory fragments that were later pieced together into a 31 cm (12.2 in) figurine combining a cave lion's head with a human body.
- New dating of bones from the same archaeological layer, published in 2013, placed the lion-man figurine at around 40,000 years old, before the last glacial maximum.
- The video argues that prehistoric communities worked far more than stone, carving wood, antler, ivory and bone into tools, weapons and art, and that the label 'Wood Age' may be more appropriate because organic materials decay while stone endures.
Sources
cambridge.org
Linked in video description
Rare wooden artifacts showcase the smarts of early ...science.org
Rare wooden artifacts showcase the smarts of early Neanderthals Complex tools from 300,000-year-old deposit at Schöningen in Germany … ...
Neanderthal Woodworking: 13 Artifacts in 597 Wood ...anthropology.net
Travertine at Abric Romaní kept the shapes of Neanderthal spears, trays and a club, and the Middle Paleolithic toolkit looks larger for it.
Site of the Schöningen Spears – Humans and hunting ...whc.unesco.org
The technological ensemble of the hunting weapons from Schöningen was created at a time when Homo heidelbergensis was already established in Europe while ...
Ancient wooden spears found in Germany were likely ...archaeologymag.com
Study shows 200000-year-old German spears were likely crafted by Neanderthals, not earlier human species.
Schöningen spearsen.wikipedia.org
The Schöningen spears are a set of ten Palaeolithic wooden weapons that were excavated between 1994 and 1999 from the 'Spear Horizon' in the open-cast ...
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