The Clacton Spear, or Clacton Spear Point, is the tip of a wooden spear discovered in Clacton-on-Sea in 1911. Dating to the Hoxnian interglacial, at approximately 400,000 years old, it is the oldest known worked wooden weapon.
Description The spear is made from Taxus baccata (European yew) wood, that has been shaped into a point and when found, was long, diameter and straight, but drying out during the first decades of storage shrank the artifact to and warped it slightly into a curve. Treatment by wax impregnation in 1952 apparently stabilized it. At some time before this, the last of the tip had broken off and had been re-attached by conservators. This tip again came off in 2013 and was re-attached. The spear is on display at the Natural History Museum, London where its age is stated as 420,000 years.
Tests to reproduce the spear 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.McNabb, J., (1989) Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 55, 251-271 Sticks and Stones: A Possible Experimental Solution to the Question of how the Clacton Spear Point was Made
Discovery and significance The spear 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 the artifact was an antler, but presented it to the Geological Society of London as a spear tip.Proceedings of the Geological Society of London May 10, 1911, 67 xcix 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 of the time doubted that the amount of planning required to manufacture such a spear and the use of it for hunting was within the cognitive capabilities of early hominids and they argued that the spear tip was a simpler tool, such as a digging stick. However, the 1995 discovery in Germany of several more complete spears of similar design that are approximately 300,000 years old,Schoch, W. H., Bigga, G., Böhner, U., Richter, P., & Terberger, T., (2015) Journal of Human Evolution 89 214–225 New insights on the wooden weapons from the Paleolithic site of Schöningen the Schöningen Spears, clearly demonstrated this capability for Neanderthals,Jarod M. Hutson, et al., Revised age for Schöningen hunting spears indicates intensification of Neanderthal cooperative behavior around 200,000 years ago, Science Advances, Vol. 11, No. 19, May 9, 2025 and now the Clacton Spear is generally regarded as a spear point. It has generally been proposed to have been used as a handheld thrusting spear rather than a throwing spear based on the type of wood used and its dimensions, though its incomplete nature and heavy overlap between the tip shapes of throwing and thrusting spears complicates interpretations of its use.
Context of find The environment of deposition for the Clacton Spear, which dates to the Hoxnian interglacial (Marine Isotope Stage 11), around 425-375,000 years ago, has been interpreted as the border of a river valley, with the local vegetation being a mixture, primarily from a mixed oak forest and secondarily from a grassland. 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), the straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), and the lion Panthera fossilis.Schreve, D. C. (1997). Mammalian biostratigraphy of the later middle pleistocene in Britain (PhD thesis). University of London, London, United Kingdom.
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. 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).
See also Boxgrove Palaeolithic site Swanscombe Palaeolithic site Lehringen spear, a 120,000 year old yew wood spear from Germany also made by Neanderthals Kalambo structure a structure made out of notched wood found in Zambia, dating to at least 476,000 years ago
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