| Clacton Spear | |
|---|---|
 Clacton Spear at the Natural History Museum, London | |
| Material | Yew wood |
| Size | length: 387 mm width: 39 mm |
| Created | c. 410,000 years ago |
| Discovered | 1911 Clacton-on-Sea, England, United Kingdom |
| Discovered by | Samuel Warren |
| Present location | London, England, United Kingdom |
The Clacton Spear, or Clacton Spear Point, is the tip of a wooden spear discovered in Clacton-on-Sea in 1911. At approximately 400,000 years old, it is the oldest known worked wooden implement. [1]
It is made of yew wood, shaped into a point, and when found was 387 mm (15.2 in) long, 39 mm (1.5 in) diameter and straight, but drying out during the first decades of storage shrank it to 367 by 37 mm (14.4 by 1.5 in), and warped it slightly into a curve. Treatment by wax impregnation in 1952 apparently stabilized it. At some time before this, the last 32 mm (1.3 in) of the tip had broken off and had been re-attached by conservators. This again came off in 2013 and was re-attached. [1] It is on display at the Natural History Museum, London where its age is stated as 420,000 years. Tests to reproduce it suggested that it had been formed by scraping with a curved flint tool of the type found on the same site, known as the Clactonian notch. [2]
It was discovered by Samuel Hazzledine Warren, an amateur pre-historian, who had been looking for simple stone tools in a known Palaeolithic sediment. He at first thought it was an antler, but presented it to the Geological Society of London as a spear tip. [3] This identification was generally accepted for some time. However, as it was not a whole spear and the great age meant that it was well before modern humans, many academics doubted that the amount of planning required (to manufacture a spear and use it for hunting) was within the cognitive capabilities of early hominids and argued it was a simpler tool such as a digging stick. [1] However, the discovery of several more complete spears around 300,000 years old, [4] the Schöningen Spears in 1995 in Germany, demonstrated this capability, and the Clacton Spear is today generally regarded as a spear point. [1]
The environment of deposition for the spear has been interpreted as the border of a river valley, with the local vegetation being a mixture of primarily mixed oak forest and secondarily grassland. [1] Faunal remains found in contemporaneous deposits in Clacton include the extinct horse Equus mosbachensis, red deer (Cervus elaphus), roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) wild boar (Sus scrofa) the extinct fallow deer species Dama clactoniana, aurochs (Bos primigenius), the Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus), steppe bison (Bison priscus), the extinct giant beaver Trogontherium, the field vole (Microtus agrestis), the narrow-nosed rhinoceros (Stephanorhinus hemitoechus) Merck's rhinoceros (Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis), and the straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus). [1] [5]
The site is characteristic of the "Clactonian industry", which shows evidence of the production of lithic flake and core tools, but with little evidence for the production of handaxes. [6] Many of the animal bones found at Clacton display evidence of butchery. At the site a bison metatarsal, a rhinoceros radius and a red deer tibia appear to have been used as hammer tools (with the rhinoceros bone also showing evidence of butchery). [7]
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