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<< Text Pages >> Atapuerca Caves - Cave or Rock Shelter in Spain in Castilla y León

Submitted by AlexHunger on Sunday, 12 September 2010  Page Views: 10464

Natural PlacesSite Name: Atapuerca Caves Alternative Name: Gran Dolina
Country: Spain Region: Castilla y León Type: Cave or Rock Shelter
Nearest Town: Burgos  Nearest Village: Atapuerca
Latitude: 42.350000N  Longitude: 3.5194W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
no data Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
5
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Cave or Rock Shelter in Castilla y León,
Important palaeolithic site with 18 metres of archaeological deposits. The caves of the Sierra de Atapuerca contain traces of early human habitation. Most of the deposits, dating 300,000 to 780,000 years ago, contain animal bone and stone tools.

A UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Note: Human Meat Just Another Meal for Early Europeans? See comment.
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Nearby Images from Flickr
Cuevas de Altapuerca - El neanderthal -
Gran Dolina
2023-04-02_02-10-03
Sima Elefante
IMG_20220704_142625
IMG_20180630_104405

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Nearby sites listing. In the following links * = Image available
 318m SSE 156° Sima de los Huesos* Cave or Rock Shelter
 3.8km NNE 29° Atapuerca* Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 9.5km NNE 15° La Brujula tumulus* Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 15.2km W 266° Castrillo de la Reina Castro or Chafurdão
 21.2km NW 321° La Polera Necropolis* Round Barrow(s)
 23.7km S 175° Cubillejo Dolmen Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 25.1km S 179° Mazariegos Dolmen* Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 29.6km SSE 165° Hortigüela Ancient Village or Settlement
 31.2km WNW 291° Piedra Alta* Standing Stone (Menhir)
 31.5km SSE 160° Jaramillo Quemado Round Barrow(s)
 33.9km NW 310° Ruyales del Páramo 1 Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 35.9km SSE 159° Morcales Round Barrow(s)
 39.1km NE 51° Barranco Del Valle Tumulua Round Barrow(s)
 39.2km NNW 336° Fuente Pecina Dolmen 2* Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 39.3km NNW 336° Fuente Pecina Dolmen 4 Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 39.3km NNW 335° Fuente Pecina Dolmen 3* Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 39.4km NNW 336° Fuente Pecina Dolmen 1 Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 42.8km NNW 342° Las Arnillas Dolmen* Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 42.8km NNW 335° La Mina Dolmen (Páramos)* Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 43.3km NNW 343° La Nava Negra* Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 44.4km NNW 327° San Quirce Dolmen Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 44.4km NNW 336° Necrópolis medieval e Iglesia de Santa María Barrow Cemetery
 45.3km NNW 337° Ciella Dolmen Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 45.9km NNW 332° Valdemuriel Dolmen 1* Burial Chamber or Dolmen
 46.5km NNW 346° Dolmen de Cista Nava Alta Cist
View more nearby sites and additional images

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"Atapuerca Caves" | Login/Create an Account | 5 News and Comments
  
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Re: Jawbone of oldest known European found in Spain by Andy B on Wednesday, 27 November 2013
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With trowels and paintbrushes, dozens of archaeologists in white hard-hats patiently sift the reddish-brown earth in the caves of Atapuerca, searching for remains a million years old.

From under strata spanning hundreds of millenia at this site in northern Spain, they unearth ancient mouse bones and the teeth of horses -- but what they most hope for is a sign of prehistoric humans that could write a new chapter in our evolution.

"The site covers a very long period of time, practically from when the first humans arrived in Europe, up to the present day," says Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, one of the directors of the dig.

"If we add up all the sites found in the Sierra de Atapuerca, it covers a period from one and a half million years ago."

The site, near the city of Burgos, has been under excavation since 1978. In 2000 it was classed by UNESCO as a piece of world heritage.

"Most periods are represented here. That's what makes it a spectacular and unique site," Bermudez says.

In 2007 researchers found in one of the caves, the so-called Elephant Chasm, a human finger and jawbone dating back 1.2 million years -- considered the remains of the "oldest European" ever found.

Since then, they have found skulls, bones and teeth belonging to what archaeologists call Homo antecessor, who lived between 850,000 and 950,000 years ago.

This was followed by the discovery of bits of Homo heidelbergensis, from around four hundred millenia ago, in a cave known as the Bone Chasm.

"It is the site that has yielded the most human remains in the world," says Juan Luis Arsuaga, another of the directors of the project, before putting on his hard-hat with a mounted lamp and disappearing down the dark, narrow passage to the cave.

More at
http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/spanish-dig-in-atapuerca-caves-seeks.html

With thanks to Coldrum for the link
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Re: Atapuerca Caves by h_fenton on Sunday, 23 January 2011
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Location (Accuracy 5):

Latitude: 42.3500
Longitude: -3.5194
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Cannibalism helped meet protein needs, keep rivals in line, study suggests. by bat400 on Sunday, 12 September 2010
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Cannibalism helped meet protein needs, keep rivals in line, study suggests.
Submitted by coldrum ---
For some European cavemen, human meat wasn't a ritual delicacy or a food of last resort but an everyday meal, according to a new study of fossil bones found in Spain.

And, it seems, everyone in the area was doing it, making the discovery "the oldest example of cultural cannibalism known to date," the study says. The 800,000-year-old butchered bones from the cave, called Gran Dolina, indicate cannibalism was rife among members of western Europe's first known human species, Homo antecessor. The fossil bones, collected since 1994, reveal that "gastronomic cannibalism" was commonplace and habitual—both to meet nutritional needs and to kill off local competition, according to the study, published in the August issue of Current Anthropology.

The cannibalism findings are based on leftover bones bearing telltale cut and impact marks, apparently from stone tools used to prepare the cave meals. The butchered remains of at least 11 humans were found mixed up with those of bison, deer, wild sheep, and other animals, said study co-author José Maria Bermúdez de Castro.

Human: It's What's for Dinner?
Because human and animal remains were tossed away together, the researchers speculate that cannibalism had no special ritual role linked to religious beliefs. Nor was human meat an emergency food consumed only in lean times, Bermúdez de Castro said. Cannibalized human bones were found in cave layers spanning a period of around a hundred thousand years, suggesting the practice was fairly consistent, according to the study.

Furthermore, the European cannibals should have had little reason for hunger. The surrounding Sierra de Atapuerca region would have been a "fantastic" habitat for early humans, with plenty of food and water as well as a mild climate, he said.

Cannibals Preferred Fresh Meat?
Humans attracted to Sierra de Atapuerca would have fought over the fertile territory—and cannibalism would have been a good way of dealing with the competition, Bermúdez de Castro said. But it might not have resulted in the fairest of fights—the 11 cannibalized individuals discovered so far were all children or adolescents.

Targeting youngsters who were less able to defend themselves "posed a lower risk for hunters" and "would have been effective in the strategy of controlling competitors," according to the study.

Cannibalism Widespread for Early Humans?
Paleontologist Silvia Bello agreed that "the distribution of [impact] and cut marks and the similarity of signs on humans and nonhuman remains make the hypothesis of cannibalism for this site likely." However, she added, it's hard to be sure whether the cannibals were eating individuals from their own group or outsiders.

Anthropologist Peter Andrews also backs the team's interpretation, with caveats. "It appears that cannibalism was widespread during much of human evolution, and it is likely that it may have been even more widespread than present evidence indicates, for some early work on [human ancestor] sites may have failed to identify the evidence for cannibalism," Nevertheless, he added, "we still have no way of knowing whether cannibalism was habitual or restricted to periods of stress, for time scales in archaeological sites are usually not fine enough to distinguish them."

To truly be able to identify part-time vs. regular cannibalism, Andrews said, "you would need evidence on a time scale of less than one year."

For more, see http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/08/100831-cannibalism-cannibal-cavemen-human-meat-science/.
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Clue unearthed Fossil shatters previous theories about human migration to Europe by coldrum on Wednesday, 21 May 2008
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Clue unearthed Fossil shatters previous theories about human migration to Europe

Clue unearthed Fossil shatters previous theories about human migration to Europe, U-M researcher says.

Monday, May 12, 2008
The Ann Arbor News

Hidden underneath layers of sediment in a cave in northern Spain was an unassuming but breakthrough scientific find: the jawbone of the oldest-known human ancestor in Europe.

The fossil, dated at approximately 1.2 million years old, shatters scientists' previous theories about human migration to Europe, said University of Michigan researcher Josep Pares, who was a member of the team that found the jawbone last summer.

"We totally confirmed that human occupation in Europe was much earlier than previously thought. ... I think that the present theories need to be reconsidered, honestly,'' said Pares, who left May 2 to return to the Spanish work site for three months.

The fossil is from an ancestor to modern humans called Homo antecessor, or "pioneer man,'' which begot Homo sapiens and the Neanderthal species.

Conventional wisdom says that Europe remained untouched by human populations until around 500,000 years ago. But the jawbone proves that theory extinct, Pares said.

It instead suggests that as human migration moved north out of Africa, it formed two "pulses'' - one that moved east into Asia and another that moved west into Europe. Fossils approximately 1.7 million years old found in the country Georgia also support that theory, Pares said.

An expert in paleomagnetism and rock magnetism, Pares was closely involved in dating the fossilized jawbone from Spain. One clue to the fossil's age was the fact that it was found in under eight layers of sediment, he said.

The team, which is mostly composed of Spanish researchers, used three different methods to date the fossil: biostratigraphy, which examines the teeth of small, fossilized mammals near the fossil in question; paleomagnetism, which uses historic data of the earth's changing magnetism; and cosmogenic burial dating, which is based on the radioactive decay of the sediment surrounding a fossil.

The jawbone's approximate age astounded the scientists. "That was really an earth-shattering discovery,'' said Pares, the only current U-M researcher involved in the dig.

The cave system where the fossil was found, called Atapuerca and located north of Madrid, is teeming with past and potential archaeological finds, Pares said.

And since the cave system is a few kilometers long, and the site where the jawbone was found still has several unexcavated layers of sediment, Pares said there's no telling how many more treasures there are to find.

"We're looking at the tip of the iceberg here,'' he said. "There's so much more to come.''

Although Pares will move to Spain later this year to become the program director of the newly created National Research Center on Human Evolution, or the CENIEH, he says he will continue to return and work on the Atapuerca site.

"Today, it's the most important (archaeological) site in the world,'' he said. "The information we can gather from the bones ... makes it the most important site right now.''

http://www.mlive.com/news/annarbornews/index.ssf?/base/news-27/1210603267319980.xml&coll=2
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Jawbone of oldest known European found in Spain by coldrum on Wednesday, 21 May 2008
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Jawbone of oldest known European found in Spain

Scientists have found a jawbone belonging to the oldest known human inhabitants of Europe who lived in a lush, game-rich region of what is now northern Spain about 1.2 million years ago.

The researchers who made the discovery at the archaeological site of Atapuerca have provisionally placed the first residents of the continent in a species called Homo antecessor, or "pioneer man", which was first named 10 years ago from remains found in one of the limestone caves at the same site.

The new lower jaw has anatomical features that are both primitively ancient and more modern, suggesting that these prehistoric humans belonged to a species that may have been a common ancestor of the Neanderthals, who became extinct about 40,000 years ago, and of modern man.

However, other scientists suggest that the jawbone is more likely to be from either a side-branch of the human family tree that later died out, or an intermediate species between the more ancient H. erectus and more recent H. neanderthalensis, rather than a direct ancestor of modern H. sapiens.

A member of the research team, Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, said that the jawbone – which contains teeth – was discovered in cave sediments alongside 32 stone tools. On the outside edge, it looks superficially similar to jawbones of H. erectus found at Dmanisi in Georgia, which date to about 1.7 million years ago, according to the study published in the journal Nature. However, the inside edge of the jaw is more modern-looking, it said.

"I think this part of human history is poorly known in Europe. We have very few fossils and artefacts. But this jawbone is the oldest human fossil we have from western Europe," said Dr de Castro, of Spain's National Centre for the Study of Human Evolution, in Burgos.

"The study of the human mandible suggests that the first settlement of western Europe could be related to an early demographic expansion out of Africa," he added.

Professor Chris Stringer, the head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, said that the timing of the first humans' arrival in Europe had always been controversial. "While early H. erectus fossils are known from Dmanisi in Georgia, dated to about 1.7 million years ago, the oldest European fossils, from the Gran Dolina site at Atapuerca in Spain, and from Ceprano in Italy, are only about half of that age," Professor Stringer said.

"There are sites in Spain, France and Italy which appear to have stone tools dated as far back as 1.5 million years, but these have no associated human fossils, and some workers have expressed doubts about the reliability of the dating.

"Now these excavations at another Atapuerca site, Sima del Elefante, have revealed part of the front of a human lower jaw containing several teeth, dated to about 1.1-1.2 million years ago," he said. "The jaw bone is small – perhaps from a female – and, on the outside surface, it mainly shows features found in earlier fossils of H. erectus and even H. habilis. But, on the internal surface, it is quite lightly built – an advanced feature found in later humans."

It is not known whether the species migrated to western Europe from Asia or Africa, or originated there from an ancestral stock that has yet to be identified. "However the specimen is classified, when combined with the emerging archaeological evidence, it suggests that southern Europe began to be colonised from western Asia not long after humans had emerged from Africa – something which many of us would have doubted even five years ago," he said. "I am cautious about inferring that this new find indicates that H. antecessor had originated in western Europe out of a founding population like the sample known from Dmanisi."

http://www.independent.co.

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