Bone finds in Spain indicate that the European continent was settled much earlier by upright early humans than previously thought.
This photograph from the Burgos finds shows a jawbone of an early human.
(dpa) According to their own statements, researchers have discovered the remains of the “first European” in northern Spain. The fossil unearthed in the province of Burgos represents “the face of the first European,” said the directors of the prestigious Fundación Atapuerca. According to the findings, early humans of the genus Homo, which also includes modern humans, Homo sapiens, lived up to 1.4 million years ago at the site on the Sierra de Atapuerca mountains, it said.
The discovery is part of the cheekbone and upper jaw of an early human. The find is of extraordinary importance for understanding the first steps in the evolution of early humans outside of Africa, it was emphasized. The oldest fossils unearthed at Atapuerca so far are a mandible and other bone fragments from two individuals that lived at the site 1.2 million years ago.
The renowned early human researcher Jean-Jacques Hublin from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology also commented on the find. “According to reports, the oldest face (1.4 million years old?) found in Europe so far was discovered in Atapuerca,” Hublin wrote on Twitter on Friday evening.
According to the Spanish researchers, the find shows that the European continent was settled much earlier by upright early humans than had previously been assumed. Until the early 1990s, it was believed that the first Europeans lived around 500,000 years ago. The excavation site in Atapuerca caused a stir when human remains were discovered there in 1994, which were assigned to the “Homo antecessor” – a human species that is said to have lived around 900,000 years ago. In subsequent years, even older remains were discovered in the Atapuerca Caves.
Atapuerca is considered a paradise for archaeologists and paleontologists. The relatively small mountain range, which is only around 15 kilometers east of the provincial capital Burgos, was declared a nature reserve, a cultural asset worth protecting and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000 because of the spectacular finds.