By DPA
Hanover : The world's oldest missile collection, a set of spears used by Palaeolithic hunters 400,000 years ago, is to go on public display for the first time this year, 15 years after they were found in a German open-cast lignite mine.
The seven spears and some butchered animal bones found with them are seen as proof that Homo erectus, an extinct species of man, could plan and direct hunts and communicate within groups.
Officials said the four best-preserved spears, each 2.3 metres long and similar to a modern javelin, would be shown in a special three-month show beginning November 24 in the state museum in Braunschweig, northern Germany.
The spears, found at Schoeningen, Germany in 1992, transformed historical thought. Previously it had been supposed that Homo erectus was too unsophisticated to make tools or organise a hunt and that only modern humanity, Homo sapiens, could do so.