Stick Enthusiasts

1030 readers

1 users here now

A place for enthusiasts of sticks of all shapes and sizes. We all love a good stick! Is it a walking stick? Light Saber? Gun? Looks brown and sticky? You decide!

Feel free to post sticks to rate, sticks that look like things, memes about sticks, long winded rants about the superiority of birch sticks over oak, anything stick related! Natural sticks are preferred, but modification and ornamentation is also fine.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works

161

Oldest wooden spear known to exist | Schöningen, Germany (400,000 BCE) (media.kbin.social)

submitted 9 months ago by Bsher8365@lemmy.world to c/stick@sh.itjust.works

21 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/HistoryArtifacts/t/834466

Oldest wooden spear known to exist | Schöningen, Germany (400,000 BCE)

More information: https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/behavior/getting-food/oldest-wooden-spear

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] PoopingCough@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Actually if you read the part where they date these spears they give a range that includes as far back as 400,000. So it might be older or might not be.

[–] Deceptichum@kbin.social 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Re-read it again.

The age of the spears, originally assessed as being between 380,000 and 400,000 years old was estimated from their stratigraphic position

However, more recently, thermoluminescence dating […] date the spears to between 337,000 and 300,000 years old, placing them at the end of the interglacial Marine Isotope Stage 9.

All studies place the spears in the Holstein interglacial, which is commonly correlated to either of the mentioned marine isotope stages, MIS 11 (424–374 thousand years ago) and MIS 9 (337–300 thousand years ago).

I’ve edited it for clairty. Let me summarise this.

Originally assumed to be 400,000 years old due to location.
Later testing shows 300,000 years.
All studies so far say that they are either of these two ranges.

Point 3 is a nothing statement because scientists disagree and thus we have leave it open-ended, even though actual testing of the site points to 300,000 years.

tl;dr: We assumed it was 400,000. We tested and it was actually 300,000. We cant confirm 100%, so we will say it could be either.