Lance of Lehringen
The lance of Lehringen is a 2.38 m long yew spear from the Middle Paleolithic , discovered in 1948 near Lehringen ( Lower Saxony ) , with which it can be assigned to the Neanderthals . Today as "lance" is not entirely accurate called, about 115 thousand to 120 thousand year-old is a spit in the Historical Museum Verden kept. A replica can be found in the Lower Saxony State Museum in Hanover .
Find situation
At the beginning of March 1948, when clearing a marl pit near Lehringen at a depth of about two meters, first the skeleton of a large animal, then stone tools and a wooden skewer were discovered. The majority of the found material was taken away along with the marl over the next few days and thus destroyed. The marl pit owner Franz Werner, who was interested in local history, called in the retired rector Alexander Rosenbrock on March 18th to carry out the recovery of the only two carts left. In the meantime, the majority of the found goods had been removed and some of them were taken away by onlookers.
The documentation of the findings in particular turned out to be poor from an archaeological point of view. So neither site plans nor photos were made. The animal was a European forest elephant ( Palaeoloxodon antiquus ), which at the time was estimated to be 45 years old. Fragments of a 2.15 m long “spear” were found between his bones.
Controversy on the question of ownership and storage location (1948–1955)
At the excavation site, two archaeologically trained employees of the Hanoverian State Museum, which the museum director Karl Hermann Jacob-Friesen had sent, inspected the finds and saw the "lance" for the first time on this occasion. With the promise to give the piece only to the taxidermist at the Technical University, Rosenbrock handed them the pieces of wood. Jacob-Friesen claimed to the mine owner that, as the finder, he had the right of disposal, but the state of Lower Saxony could demand extradition. Rosenbrock and the Verden city council demanded the spear to be returned immediately, which was a novelty in the country, because up until then all finds of major importance had been deposited in the state museum. The district administrative court called on for lack of reaction from the museum passed the case on to the minister of education, against whom Rosenbrock sued after another year of waiting. Only after seven years did the spit come to Verden under numerous conditions.
Archaeological interpretation
The skeletal remains have been identified as those of an adult forest elephant. A “spear” was stuck between his ribs, which was more likely a spear made of yew wood . The tip made of the same material was attached slightly offset. It must have been driven into the chest of the forest elephant from the front. Due to the weight of the forest elephant falling on it, the spear was bent into a semicircle during recovery, flattened and broken into eleven parts. Traces of usage and polishing indicate that the skewer had probably been used for various purposes before the event.
The at least 28 stone artifacts found are chips made from Baltic flint . The lack of unprocessed flint (raw bulbs) and finished stone tools is striking . Microscopic analysis of signs of wear showed meat polish on three cuts. The tee boxes were probably used on site to dismantle the forest elephant, but it does not seem to be a storage place.
Pollen analyzes as well as the forest elephant itself point the hunting event to the last interglacial 128,000 to 115,000 years ago BP . This interglacial is also known as the Eem warm period and dates to the oxygen isotope level 5e. Culturally, this is the time of the Middle Paleolithic , when only the Neanderthals lived in Europe .
The hunting inventory of Lehringen was able to prove for the first time that the Neanderthals actively hunted big game and used wooden skewers for this purpose.
literature
- Karl Dietrich Adam : The forest elephant from Lehringen - a prey of the diluvial man. Quartär 5, 1951, pp. 79-92. ( online )
- Hartmut Thieme , Stephan Veil: New investigations into the Eemzeitlichen elephant hunting ground Lehringen, Ldkr. Verden. Die Kunde 36, 1985, pp. 11-58.
- Waltraut Deibel-Rosenbrock: The finds from teaching . Publication series of the Verdener Heimatbund eV, special print from the Stade yearbook 1960.
- Ernst Andreas Friedrich : The Elefantenkuhle von Lehringen , pp. 13–15, in: If stones could talk. Volume I, Landbuch-Verlag, Hannover 1989, ISBN 3-7842-03973 .
Web links
- The lance of Lehringen with pictures at Archäologisches Lexikon
- Presentation in the historical museum Verden
- "The lance of Lehringen" in: Der Spiegel from February 9, 1955