SCHÖNINGEN, Germany — Wooden hunting spears discovered more than two decades ago in northern Germany — once thought to predate the Neanderthals — have now been re-dated to 200,000 years ago, placing them squarely within the era of early Neanderthals and reshaping our understanding of their intelligence, coordination, and social structure.

The weapons, long believed to be the handiwork of Homo heidelbergensis, have instead emerged as evidence of sophisticated Neanderthal tool use, following a new biochemical dating analysis using fossilized snail shells found at the same site.

“Schöningen was always an archaeological anomaly,” said Olaf Jöris, archaeologist at the Leibniz Center for Archaeology and co-author of the new study. “Now we know it fits into the larger Neanderthal story.”

Reassessing a Landmark Discovery

The Schöningen spears, found in the late 1990s in an open-pit lignite mine, are among the oldest preserved wooden weapons ever unearthed. Carved from spruce and pine and measuring between six and eight feet long, they were discovered alongside the fossilized remains of dozens of horses — almost certainly their prey.

For years, the age of these spears was based on sedimentary layers, which placed the site at between 300,000 and 400,000 years old. That estimation seemed to predate the emergence of Neanderthals and suggested attribution to Homo heidelbergensis, an extinct hominin species regarded as a common ancestor of both Neanderthals and modern humans.

However, new research published in Science Advances leverages amino acid racemization, a method of dating fossilized organic material by the breakdown of proteins in snail shells, to deliver a much younger and more archaeologically coherent age of 200,000 years.

“It’s a bit disappointing when you make sites younger rather than older,” said Kirsty Penkman, a geochemist at the University of York and co-lead on the study. “But the results make far more sense in light of what we know about early Neanderthal behavior.”

What It Means for Neanderthal Cognition

The updated dating firmly places the spears within the Middle Paleolithic period, a transformative era in human evolution characterized by the emergence of cooperative hunting, complex tool use, and group-based social behavior — all traits increasingly associated with Neanderthals.

“This isn’t a lone hunter scenario,” said Jöris. “This is organized, strategic hunting — a group pooling risk, planning, executing.”

Far from the brutish caricatures of early 20th-century anthropology, Neanderthals are now recognized for their growing mental sophistication. The spears’ aerodynamic design and size suggest they were used as thrusting and throwing weapons, requiring knowledge of ballistics and craftsmanship to construct — and perhaps even language or symbolic thought to coordinate hunts.

Scientific Debate Persists — But the Picture Is Shifting

Despite strong support for the revised dating, not all experts are ready to abandon the older timeline. Some, including archaeologist Thomas Terberger of Georg August University of Göttingen, argue that the transition from Homo heidelbergensis to Neanderthals may not have been as sharp as previously thought.

“Was there a big difference in hunting strategies between late heidelbergensis and early Neanderthals? I’m not so sure,” Terberger said.

Still, most researchers welcome the updated view. Andrzej Wiśniewski of the University of Wrocław called the dating “very convincing” and noted that it fits well with emerging evidence of early Neanderthal innovation across Eurasia.

A Turning Point in Prehistoric Studies

The Schöningen site has long puzzled archaeologists due to the extraordinary preservation of its artifacts — something rare for organic material from so far back in time. The marshy conditions of the site helped preserve wood and bone that would typically rot, offering a unique snapshot of life and death in a Middle Paleolithic hunting ground.

“We’re seeing the beginning of strategic, socially driven behavior,” said Jöris. “The shift in dating helps us contextualize that turning point in evolution.”

With the debate over the spears’ origins gradually settling, researchers now turn their attention to what the Schöningen find can teach us about tool production, group behavior, and the spread of Neanderthals across Ice Age Europe — a time when the human story was just beginning to diverge into its many branches.