Stone tool tells the story of Neanderthal hunting

Hohle Fels. Leaf point. 65,000 years ago Neanderthal from the Swabian Jura hunted horses and reindeer with hafted leaf-shaped stone points. A newly discovered leaf point from the UNESCO World Heritage site of Hohle Fels Cave documents the evolution of hunting. A team under the direction of Professor Nicholas Conard for the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment in southern Germany recovered the artifact underlying a layer dating to 65,000 years ago, which represents a minimum age for the find. Microscopic studies document that this carefully made projectile point was mounted on a wooden shaft and used as a thrusting spear to kill large game. Results of the excavations and analysis of the leaf point appear in two papers in this week's publication of Archäologische Ausgrabungen in Baden-Württemberg and Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Urgeschichte .