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Schöningen Spears (wikipedia.org)
63 points by beefman on Jan 29, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 7 comments



It is amazing that wood can be preserved so well over hundreds of thousands of years, the Clacton spear [0] is one hundred thousand years older than these and look at the photo of it!

How many things from such a long time ago must be out there if we can still find any of them today? This is a serious question and if someone can point me to research with math on it, it would be much appreciated!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clacton_Spear


I'm wondering the same thing and how the result compares to what we have found up till now. The article mentions this found has stirred the academic discussion on what earlier humans could do and how advanced their technology was. What are the chances our predecessors were much more sophisticated than we are ever able to prove?


Or, maybe they are much younger than we think, and we need to upgrade our dating methodology...


Highly doubtable. Carbon dating is quite sound.


Carbon dating isn't considered to be accurate for objects older than 50,000 years. These objects weren't dated that way.



I misread the title and was confused about how these could be both spears and not spears at the same time.




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