Unique discovery of an aurochs skull impaled on a wooden stake may be linked to one of northern Germany’s oldest known burials
Archaeologists investigating the Duvensee Moor in northern Germany are attempting to unravel the mystery of an extraordinary 10,500-year-old aurochs skull found impaled on a wooden stake.
The discovery, made near Lüchow in the Duchy of Lauenburg district of Schleswig-Holstein, has been described as unique in Europe. Archaeologist Harald Lübke, who leads the excavations, believes the unusual object may have formed part of an ancient burial ritual carried out by hunter-gatherers shortly after the last Ice Age.
The skull was discovered during excavations in the summer of 2025, only a few metres from what researchers have identified as the oldest known grave in northern Germany. That burial was investigated during archaeological work in 2022 and 2023.
Lübke believes the proximity of the two discoveries is unlikely to be accidental.
“The skull was probably meant to protect the buried person,” he said.
Part of an ancient burial ritual?
Researchers believe hunter-gatherer communities living in the region cremated their dead before burying the remains together with material from the funeral pyre.
The newly discovered skull suggests that the ceremony may have involved another striking practice: mounting animal skulls on wooden stakes around or near the burial site.
Despite being broken into several fragments, the aurochs skull has survived almost completely intact after more than ten millennia in the waterlogged environment of the Duvensee Moor.
Lübke, a researcher at the Leibniz Centre for Archaeology, described it as a unique archaeological discovery in Europe.
More than 20 specialists have examined the individual fragments in recent months, including researchers working at the Schleswig branch of the Leibniz Centre for Archaeology.
One of the most important questions remains unanswered: exactly how was the wooden stake inserted into the skull?
Researchers now plan to carefully separate the animal’s jawbone from the rest of the skull. According to Lübke, only then will they be able to investigate precisely how the wooden peg entered the remains and potentially determine how the object was originally constructed.
Archaeological hotspot reveals life after the Ice Age
The Duvensee Moor has been an important site for archaeological research for around a century. More than 20 prehistoric sites have now been documented across the area.
The discoveries have provided researchers with an increasingly detailed picture of the hunter-gatherer communities that occupied the landscape after the end of the last Ice Age.
Lübke believes the location where the aurochs skull was discovered was used by these early inhabitants thousands of years before permanent farming settlements appeared in northern Europe.
The aurochs itself would have been an imposing animal. The wild ancestor of modern domestic cattle once inhabited large areas of Europe, Asia and North Africa before eventually becoming extinct.
Race to preserve the moor’s secrets
Further excavations are planned in the Duvensee Moor during the summer of 2026, but archaeologists are increasingly working against time.
The wetland is gradually drying out, threatening the exceptional preservation conditions that have protected organic materials such as wood and bone for thousands of years. As those conditions deteriorate, archaeological remains that survived for millennia could begin to decay.
Lübke and his colleagues have been carrying out renewed investigations in the moor since 2022, with each excavation season producing unexpected discoveries.
“So far, something new has turned up every year, and I’m curious to see what it will be this year,” Lübke said.
This time, researchers are hoping for an especially ambitious discovery: the remains of a prehistoric boat.
Finding one could provide rare evidence of how Mesolithic hunter-gatherers travelled across lakes and waterways more than 10,000 years ago, potentially revealing another chapter in the lives of the people who once inhabited the ancient landscape of Duvensee.
Sources : NDR