After the discovery of the oldest human jaw found in Atapuerca, dating back 1.2 million years, they have just announced asurprising new paleontological find. They have managed to unearth a Cretaceous flint dating back 1.5 million years, making it the oldest in Western Europe. The tool would be at the limit accepted so far as the first occupation of the area, just in those 1.5 million years.
Equallynew stone fossils have been foundthat would indicate a continuity of human population since this settlement originated until the appearance of theHomo predecessor, about 850.00 years ago. As it explainsEudald Carbonell, co-director of the Atapuerca Research Team, these findings “contradict the hypotheses put forward by some researchers that explained the first settlement of Europe from the succession of small waves of hominids without continuity in time and condemned to extinction due to their inability to adapt to new spaces ”.
For Carbonell, “although it is a very archaic lithic industry, it is already the development of complex activities, such as the exploitation of animals that have fallen in the torcas. These activities imply a certain control of the territory, as it is necessary to read and interpret the signals that occur in the environment when an animal falls into a trap of this style, such as the bellowing of the animals themselves or the fluttering of carrion birds in the vicinity”.
Also, in thelast excavation campaign in Atapuercaa scapula has been unearthed from aHomo predecessor, the second that is known of such an archaic hominid. As they have explained sinceCatalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution(IPHES) belonging to a boy or girl between four and six years old, and represents a very good opportunity to investigate the development and locomotion of the species.
