Atapuerca Archives - usatoday24

The last case of prehistoric cannibalism found in Atapuerca only has a brutal explanation: violence

August 11, 2025 by usatoday24

There are few prehistoric cultures that we know practiced cannibalism. Already out of ritual, famine or in a context of violent conflict, the consumption of human flesh should not have to be completely uncommon, and now we have found a new example nearby, in Atapuerca. Canibalism in the Neolithic. A study of bone remains found in the cave of El Mirador, one of the deposits of Atapuerca, Burgos, He has found Canibalism tests among the inhabitants of this Burgos cave. The remains have been dated about 5,700 years ago, during the Neolithic. The remains found would have belonged to 11 individuals of different ages: “Including children, adolescents and adults,” explains the team responsible for the study. These data, they explain, point to a “systematic consumption”, probably linked to violence between groups and not to rituals or ceremonial acts. Ethnography and archeology teach us that even in barely stratified societies there are episodes of violence where enemies are also consumption as a form of extreme elimination ”, stood out in a press release Antonio Rodríguez-Hidalgo, co-author of the study. Incriminatory brands.The remains, in an “exceptional state”, were found in two different sectors of the cave. The taphonomic analysis of the remains (the study of the process that leads to some bone remains to fossilize), allowed to identify in these remains of cutting and fractures that allowed access the marrowas well as cooking tests and footprints left by human teeth during consumption. The team also conducted an isotopic strontium analysis (SR), which studies the relative presence of two isotopes of this element (⁸⁷sr and ⁸⁶sr) that showed that the individuals consumed “were of local origin.” The analysis also showed that its consumption was fast. The radiocarbon analysis, meanwhile, allowed to date the remains, placing them in a time space between 5,700 and 5,570 years before the present. The details of the study were published In an article In the magazine Scientific Reports. Interpret the incomprehensible. Today cannibalism is abominable, to the point of being taboo in life or death contexts. That is why interpreting these past practices is difficult for those who study them. After analyzing the tests found, the team concluded that the case responded to a confrontation between livestock groups in the area. This conflict I would have concluded With the “elimination of a complete family group”, a elimination made if it can be more tangible with the consumption of the group’s meat. “Canibalism is one of the most complex behaviors of interpreting, due to the difficulty that the consumption of human beings by other human beings implies. To this it is added that, in many cases, we do not have all the necessary evidence to link it with a specific behavioral context. Finally, the prejudices of our society tend to always interpret it as an act of barbarism,” pointed in the press release Palmira Saladié, who led the team responsible for the study. Of the Neolithic at the Bronze Age. This would not be an isolated case in the history of the Cave of El Mirador, not even the most recent. The finding is linked to a previous discovery, another case of cannibalism in the same environment, only that this already in the Bronze Age, between 4,600 and 4,100 years ago. “The recurrence of these practices at different times of recent prehistory in the cave of El Mirador makes this deposit a key site to understand prehistoric human cannibalism and their link with death, as well as with a possible ritual or cultural interpretation of the human body within the worldview of those groups,” Saladié added. In Xataka | Cup -shaped skulls, cannibal practices and other things that were done in Malaga 7,000 years ago Image | IPhes-Cerca

We have been studying the oldest remains of a human in Atapuerca for more than two years. And we still know what species belonged to

March 14, 2025 by usatoday24

In the summer of 2022, those responsible for the Atapuerca site, in Burgos, made known An important find. It was about what seemed to be the face of the oldest hominid found throughout Europe and lived more than a million years ago in the north of the Peninsula. Almost three years later, we know new details about this primitive human. Pink Details such as the name with which they have baptized the individual to whom these bones belonged: Pink. The study has corroborated the initial estimates of the team responsible for the finding, which at the time already indicated that we are facing The oldest human in Europe of which we have record. The new estimates date the remains in a period that goes Between 1.4 and 1.1 million years ago In time. This implies that the fossil is several hundred thousand years before the oldest remains of the deposit (belonging to a Homo antecessor), dated about 860,000 years ago. Homo affinis erectus. An important fact that still remains to be elucidated about the species belonged to this individual. The new work confirms that the individual did not belong to the species Homo antecessoras the remains found in the Great Dolina. The specimen would have belonged to an old Homo erectus. That is why the remains have been classified in a “provisional” way as a member of the species Homo affinis erectus. “Homo antecessorShare with Homo sapiens a more modern -looking face and the projection of the bones of the nose, while Pink’s face configuration is more primitive, with features that remember Homo erectusespecially in its nasal, flat and poorly developed structure ”, explained in a press release María Martinón-Torres, director of CENIEH. June 2022. The fragment was found by Edgar TéllezMember of the Atapuerca research team, in June 2022. cataloged as ATE7-1, the remains were found in the stratum TE7 of the elephant’s chasm. After more than two years of analysis, the details of their study have been published in the form of Article in the magazine Nature. Clues about a way of life.The TE7 level can give us important clues about the environment in which Pink developed. It has recovered stone tools and animal remains with cuts of cuts, which would have been used by these presumable human inhabitants of Atapuerca and Europe. As explained by the team responsible for the study, these brands indicate that the inhabitants of Atapuerca in the lower Pleistocene not only knew the resources available in their environment, they were also able to take advantage of them “systematically”. A piece of a huge puzzle. The finding is just one more piece in the huge puzzle of human evolution and the dissemination of gender species Homo throughout our planet. We know that various waves of several species left their original continent, Africa, towards Eurasia, but the routes that followed have been hidden over time. Another important clue in this regard is precisely on a very different access route: Caucasus. A fossil gurpo found in Georgia They were so far the only track of the adventures of the H. erectus out of Africa. The oldest hominile fossils found outside the African continent were five skulls with around 1.8 million years old. These fossils were classified as H. erectusbut there are also certain doubts about this classification due to some important differences in their characteristics. This will suggest, Ann Gibbons explains In an article in the magazine Sciencethat more than one species HomoI could have left Africa in this era. The Atapuerca fossil would not belong to this species strictly, and now it gives us a new clue with which to advance in the resolution of the enigma complex. In Xataka | We just found the lost link of human evolution: the first bone toolbox Image | Iphes

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