The Dawn of Human Culture by Richard G. Klein

Author:Richard G. Klein [Klein, Richard G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: 0471252522
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Human stomachs are poorly equipped to digest raw muscle fiber, and without fire people before 250,000 years ago might have had little incentive to hunt. Yet, it is difficult to imagine that people could have colonized Europe 500,000 years ago if they were not active hunters, and excavations at Schöningen, Germany, have now provided incon-trovertible proof. It is perhaps no coincidence that Schöningen is 05 Humanity Branches Out.r.qxd 1/29/02 5:05 PM Page 158

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prominent on the list of sites that contain ancient, if admittedly tentative, evidence for fire.

Schöningen is an active, open-cast, brown-coal mine that just happens to contain one of the most informative early archeological occurrences in Europe. In October 1994, less than two weeks remained before the mining company’s giant rotor digger was scheduled to oblit-erate the site. German government archeologist Hartmut Thieme and a colleague were working to recover the maximum possible number of stone artifacts and animal bones, when they unearthed a short wooden stick that had been artificially pointed at both ends. The Schöningen deposits are dense and waterlogged, meaning that they are relatively airtight, and it was this unusual circumstance that preserved wood.

Ancient wooden artifacts are the archeological equivalent of hen’s teeth, and the discovery bought Thieme another excavation season. The following year, in a layer dated between 400,000 and 350,000 years ago, he uncovered three unmistakable wooden spears, each between 2 and 3

meters (6.5 and 10 feet) long and carved from the heartwood of a mature spruce tree (Figure 5.7). Nearby, he found bones from at least ten wild horses, many of which showed fractures and cut marks from butchery.

Thieme concluded that stone-age hunters, lurking near the margin of a former lake, had ambushed the horses, driven them into the water, and then quickly dispatched them with the spears.

He published his discovery in a February 1997 issue of Nature magazine that also included a startling report on the cloning of Dolly the sheep. The public was captivated by the cloning, but archeologists took note of the spears. Before Schöningen, only two other sites had provided comparable objects. One was Clacton in England, where deposits that were probably about the same age as those at Schöningen 05 Humanity Branches Out.r.qxd 1/29/02 5:05 PM Page 159

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0

0

50 cm

2 ft

FIGURE 5.7

Wooden spears from

spear 1

Schöningen, Germany

(recovered in 5 parts)

spear 2

(redrawn after H. Thieme

Schöningen

1996, Archäologisches

Korrespondenzblatt 26,

fig. 9).

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had produced a 30-centimeter (1-foot) long pointed wooden object that could be a spear tip. The other was Lehringen, Germany, where deposits that are probably about 125,000 years old had provided a complete spear from among the ribs of an elephant.

In his description of the Schöningen spears, Thieme emphasized that they were heavier towards the business end and tapered towards the back, like modern javelins. From this he argued that they were designed for throwing. Archeologist John Shea of Stony Brook University, who has investigated the evolution of projectile weapons,

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