Scientists have analyzed amino acids preserved in snail shells to determine a new age for the world’s oldest complete wooden hunting weapons.
The world-famous Schöningen spears, discovered in Schöningen, Germany, are turning out to be younger than scientists once believed. An international research team has revised their age to about 200,000 years old — 100,000 years more recent than previous estimates.
The study used recent advances in a dating method called “amino acid geochronology,” a technique developed further by a research group led by Professor Kirsty Penkman at the University of York.
By analyzing amino acids preserved in snail shells found in the same sediment layer as the spears, the research team was able to directly date the exact layer where the weapons were discovered for the first time.
From 400,000 to 200,000 years
When the first spears were uncovered in the mid-1990s, they were initially believed to be around 400,000 years old. That estimate was later revised to about 300,000 years, based on the age of the surrounding sediment layers.
The researchers, whose findings are published in the journal Science Advances, emphasize that the new, younger age of the spears does not reduce their significance. Instead, they argue it strengthens the importance of the Schöningen site as a key reference point in understanding human evolution.
Spears linked to Neanderthal era
Co-author of the paper, Professor Kirsty Penkman, from the Department of Chemistry at the University of York, said: “This new dating evidence places the remarkable Schöningen spears within the Middle Palaeolithic period, the time of the Neanderthals.”
First author Dr. Jarod Hutson of the Leibniz Zentrum für Archäologie (LEIZA) in Mainz, Germany, said “The Schöningen spears are so significant because, unlike older sites, they offer compelling evidence of sophisticated hunting strategies which would have required better cognitive abilities and the development of more complex communication, planning and social structures. The updated timeline for Schöningen now aligns it with a growing number of sites which together indicate a significant leap in early human hunting capabilities during this period.”
Preserved lakeside environment
The site at Schöningen, Lower Saxony, was located at a lakeside where rapid sedimentation caused the exceptional preservation of organic materials, including the impressive arsenal of hunting weapons and other wooden implements, along with the butchered remains of hunted prey, which primarily consisted of horses.
Previous archaeological investigations analysing these horse remains, notably by the MONREPOS Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioural Evolution near Neuwied, a LEIZA department closely linked to the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, have revealed evidence of seasonal hunting of small groups of horses along the shores of the ancient lake, with over 50 individual animals documented.
Implications for social cooperation
These findings point towards well-organised hunting parties, where individuals undertook coordinated and specific roles to ensure successful kills of larger and more challenging prey. The redating of the Schöningen site implies a notable increase in the level and complexity of human cooperation by approximately 200,000 years ago.
Amino acid geochronology – the biochemical approach central to the redating of the site – takes advantage of the fact that amino acids, the building blocks of protein, come in two forms: left-handed and right-handed versions of the same molecule.
When a creature is alive, its proteins are made only of the “left-handed” version. But after it dies, some of these slowly change into the “right-handed” version. By measuring how much of each version is left in certain fossils, scientists can work out how long ago that creature lived. The researchers looked at the tiny “trapdoors” (called opercula) of small freshwater snails called Bithynia. These little doors are made of a mineral that traps the amino acids inside for millions of years, like a perfect time capsule. The scientists took samples of these snail trapdoors from the same layer of earth where the famous spears were found.
They compared the amounts of the two types of amino acids in the opercula from Schöningen with those from other opercula found across northern Europe. Another research team in Madrid carried out further tests on horse teeth and tiny organisms called ostracods also found in the same sediment layer, and the results backed up the idea that the Schöningen site is younger than previously thought.
Reference: “Revised age for Schöningen hunting spears indicates intensification of Neanderthal cooperative behavior around 200,000 years ago” by Jarod M. Hutson, Felix Bittmann, Peter Fischer, Alejandro García-Moreno, Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser, Ellie Nelson, José E. Ortiz, Kirsty E. H. Penkman, Zoran M. Perić, Daniel Richter, Trinidad Torres, Elaine Turner, Aritza Villaluenga, Dustin White and Olaf Jöris, 9 May 2025, Science Advances.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adv0752
Funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 865222
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1 Comment
They’re still pretty old though.