The site of Schöningen is located near the town of Schöningen, district of Helmstedt, in Lower Saxony, Germany. The site was discovered in 1992 during rescue excavations caused by lignite open cast mining. Systematic excavations have been led by the Lower Saxony State Office of Cultural Heritage (NLD) and since 2008, these are carried out in collaboration with the Eberhard Karls University Tübingen and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (SHEP). Mining activities ended in 2016.
The site has been dated by various methods to ca. 300,000 years before present and was occupied by Pleistocene hunter-gatherers (Homo heidelbergensis or Homo neanderthalensis). During the Pleistocene, the site was located at a lakeside when rapid sedimentation assured the exceptional preservation of organic materials including wooden artefacts, bones, insect remains, and pollen among others. The site of Schöningen has produced the best preserved and oldest hunting weapons in the world as well as an outstanding palaeoenvironmental record, both of which have been the subject of interdisciplinary research for about 30 years. Together with animal bones that are connected to hunting activities, the exceptionally well-preserved hunting weapons offer unique insights into past human hunting behaviour, human cognition, social behaviour and the lifeways of Pleistocene hunter-gatherer societies. The site of Schöningen has fundamentally changed our perception of Pleistocene human species in regards to socio-cultural abilities, human cognition, and technological expertise.
Source: UNESCO WHS Tentative List
Museum housing the Schöningen spears - a set of ten wooden weapons from the Palaeolithic Age that were excavated between 1994 and 1999 from the 'Spear Horizon' in the open-cast lignite mine in Schöningen, Helmstedt district, Germany. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List. Thanks to Dustin of Germany. A stamp with matching pictorial cancellation.
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