Was the Stone Age Really the Wood Age?

Science|Was the Stone Age Actually the Wood Age?

In 1836, Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, a Danish antiquarian, brought the archetypal semblance of bid to prehistory, suggesting that the aboriginal hominids of Europe had gone done 3 stages of technological improvement that were reflected successful the accumulation of tools. The basal chronology — Stone Age to Bronze Age to Iron Age — present underpins the archaeology of astir of the Old World (and cartoons similar “The Flintstones” and “The Croods”).

Thomsen could good person substituted Wood Age for Stone Age, according to Thomas Terberger, an archaeologist and caput of probe astatine the Department of Cultural Heritage of Lower Saxony, successful Germany.

“We tin astir apt presume that woody tools person been astir conscionable arsenic agelong arsenic chromatic ones, that is, 2 and a fractional oregon 3 cardinal years,“ helium said. “But since wood deteriorates and seldom survives, preservation bias distorts our presumption of antiquity.” Primitive chromatic implements person traditionally characterized the Lower Paleolithic period, which lasted from astir 2.7 cardinal years agone to 200,000 years ago. Of the thousands of archaeological sites that tin beryllium traced to the era, wood has been recovered from less than 10.

Dr. Terberger was squad person of a study published past period successful the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that provided the archetypal broad study connected the woody objects excavated from 1994 to 2008 successful the peat of an open-pit ember excavation adjacent Schöningen, successful bluish Germany. The affluent haul included 2 twelve implicit oregon fragmented spears (each astir arsenic gangly arsenic an N.B.A. center) and double-pointed throwing sticks (half the magnitude of a excavation cue) but nary hominid bones. The objects day from the extremity of a lukewarm interglacial play 300,000 years ago, astir erstwhile aboriginal Neanderthals were supplanting Homo heidelbergensis, their contiguous predecessors successful Europe. The projectiles unearthed astatine the Schöningen site, known arsenic Spear Horizon, are considered the oldest preserved hunting weapons.

In the mid-1990s, the find of 3 of the spears — on with chromatic tools and the butchered remains of 10 chaotic horses — upended prevailing ideas astir the intelligence, societal enactment and toolmaking skills of our extinct quality ancestors. At the time, the technological statement was that humans were elemental scavengers who lived hand-to-mouth until astir 40,000 years ago.

“It turned retired that these pre-Homo sapiens had fashioned tools and weapons to hunt large game,” Dr. Terberger said. “Not lone did they pass unneurotic to topple prey, but they were blase capable to signifier the butchering and roasting.”