by Playfuls Staff |
5th February 2007
A summer camp used by Stone Age hunter- gatherers 120,000 years ago has been uncovered by archaeologists using a giant excavator at a German opencast [more] coal-mine.
Archaeologist Juergen Thissen forecast in Bonn Monday that historians were unlikely ever to find the like again in Germany.
The site was discovered in December 2005 when a hand-adze was spotted six metres below ground as soil was being removed in preparation to extract lignite at Inden, 40 kilometres west of Cologne.
The excavator later pulled away 30,000 tons of "loess" soil, exposing 3,000 square metres of ground that used to be the surface during a global warming period between two ice ages.
Post-holes of three shelters, probably roofed with animal skins, were found, along with charred remains from fires. Among stone tools collected were a one-sided stone knife, serrated blades, blanks and hundreds of stone chips.
Thissen said it looked as if the camp was used only briefly during a summer hunting expedition. The climate at the time was similar to that in today's Mediterranean. The site is about 60 kilometres east of Belgium's Neanderthal campsites at Veldwezelt.
© 2007 DPA
