I was searching the name Richard Rutledge - he's an anthropologist - and  
found this interesting tidbit.
http://web.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/n-s/stone3.html



A more recent archaeological find in a lignite mine at Schöningen,
about 60 miles east of Hanover, is almost as sensational. Three wooden  
spears found alongside stone tools and animal bones have been dated as  
400,000 years old, yet they are as precisely weighted as modern javelins.  
The oldest hunting weapons ever found, each was carved from a single trunk  
of spruce about 2m (6ft) long and has a broad, pointed tip, made from the  
densest, heaviest part of the wood, and a tapering tail end. Many experts  
had previously believed that the Neanderthals didn't have the ability to  
plan a hunt and probably scavenged carcasses. The spears show that not  
only did the Neanderthals have weapons for killing, they also had an  
understanding of aerodynamics.

The theory that no interbreeding occurred between Neanderthals and Homo  
sapiens was turned on its head by a discovery in 1998 of a 24,500-year-old  
skeleton of a child at Lagar Velho in the Lapedo Valley north of Lisbon,  
Portugal. The skeleton has some Neanderthal characteristics – short legs,  
with particularly short tibias (lower leg bones), a stocky body and some  
teeth typical of the Neanderthals – but the chin and pelvis of modern  
humans. Radiocarbon dating confirmed that the child had lived 4,000 years  
after the time when Neanderthals and modern humans co-existed on the  
Iberian peninsula. Thus this small skeleton of a four-year-old, given a  
ritual burial with a pierced shell and red ochre, is conclusive proof that  
interbreeding took place.


BTW the densest, heaviest part of the wood (and hardest) is at the bottom,  
where the roots leave the trunk.

William