Page 520 - Atlas of Creation Volume 2

400,000-YEAR-OLD SPEARS THAT ASTONISHED

EVOLUTIONISTS

In 1995, the German archaeologist Hartmut Thieme discovered a number of wooden
remains in Schöningen, Germany. These had been carefully crafted spears—in other
words, the world's oldest known hunting tools. This discovery came as a great surprise
to evolutionists, in whose view systematic hunting occurred about 40,000 years ago,
when modern humans supposedly first appeared. To make the Clacton and Lehringen

spears, which had been found earlier, fit with the evolutionary lie, they had been
downgraded to digging-sticks or snow-probes. 18

Actually, however, the Schöningen spears went back a great deal further—to around
400,000 years ago. In addition, their age was so certain that Robin Dennell, one of the
Sheffield University archaeologists whose paper was published in Nature magazine,
stated that it was impossible to alter their date or to engage in false interpretation of
them:

But the Schöningen discoveries are unambiguously spears: to regard them as snow-probes or dig-
ging-sticks is like claiming that power drills are paperweights. 19

One reason why these spears so surprised evolutionist scientists is the misconception
that the supposedly primitive humans of that time lacked the ability to manufacture
such objects. Yet these spears are the product of a mind able to calculate and plan in

stages. The trunk of a spruce tree around 30 years old was used for each spear, and its
tip was made from the base, where the wood is hardest. Each spear was designed in
the same proportions and—just as with modern criteria—its center of gravity was one-
third of the way back from the sharp end.

In the face of all this information, Robin Dennell comments:
These represent considerable investment of time and skill—in selecting an appropriate tree, in

roughing out the design and in the final stages of shaping. In other words, these [so-called] ho-
minids were not living within a spontaneous ‘five-minute culture', acting opportunistically in re-
sponse to immediate situations. Rather, we see considerable depth of planning, sophistication of

design, and patience in carving the wood, all of which have been attributed only to modern hu-
mans. 20

Thieme, who discovered the spears, says:
The use of sophisticated spears as early as the Middle Pleistocene may mean that many current the-

ories on early human behaviour and culture must be revised. 21

As Hartmut Thieme and Robin Dennell state, Darwinist
claims concerning the history of mankind do not reflect
the facts. The truth is, mankind never underwent evolu-
tion. Backward civilizations and highly developed and

advanced ones both existed in the past.

518 Atlas of Creation Vol. 2