Sierra de Atapuerca

The Sierra de Atapuerca is a small mountain range north of Ibeas de Juarros in the province of Burgos ( Castilla y León , Spain ), which extends between the Cantabrian and Iberian Mountains from northwest to southeast. Because of the extraordinary archaeological and paleontological finds in its interior, it was declared a nature reserve, a cultural asset worthy of protection and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Found fossils of several species of Hominini  : Homo antecessor , Homo heidelbergensis , Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens .

Panoramic view of the Sierra de Atapuerca

Geographical location

The Sierra de Atapuerca is bordered to the south by the Arlanzón River , to the north by the Vena River and to the east by the Sierra de la Demanda , a foothill of the Iberian Mountains. It belongs to the so-called Corridor of La Bureba , an important and historical pass between the Ebro Valley and the river basin of the Duero . From the orographic point of view, it is a simple formation with a maximum height of 1079 m at Pico de San Vicente . It consists of Cretaceous limestone , covered by a considerable mass of holm oaks , Portuguese oaks (Quercus faginea) and, above all, undergrowth of prickly gorse , rosemary , lavender , thyme and sage .

The La Bureba pass has always been used as the main gateway from Europe to the Iberian Peninsula . It connects the Mediterranean side of the Ebro Valley with the Atlantic side of the Duero Valley and at the same time lies on the path that branches from the Pyrenees passes to the other places on the peninsula, both to the west ( Galicia and Portugal ) and to the south (to the Castilian Meseta , to Andalusia , Extremadura , southern Portugal and Africa ). One of the most important Roman roads also led through the pass, in the Middle Ages also the Way of St. James and at the end of the 19th century the N1 (today the Autovía A-1 ).

The pass was not only used by people, fauna and flora have also spread through it. Fertile soil and an abundance of resources have resulted in considerable biodiversity and constant human settlement for over 800,000 years.

geology

The Sierra consists of a small hill - corresponding to a lying anticline - made of limestone , sand and sandstone of marine origin from the Upper Cretaceous (between 80 and 100 million years old) and covered by deposits of the Arlanzón River, which formed numerous alluvial terraces in the Quaternary .

On this anticline and around the Sierra there are newer materials of continental origin that can be assigned to the Tertiary (between 25 and 5 million years old). They consist of conglomerates of limestone and red clay from the Oligocene under some layers of marl , clay, gypsum, and parcels of lime and marl that are typical of the old lacustrian surroundings of the Duero catchment area .

Towards the end of the Pliocene and the beginning of the Pleistocene , the Arlanzón river valley begins to form, leaving 15 layers of very asymmetrical Quaternary terraces on its way through the Sierra. The rise in river level and the limestone structure have resulted in a karst complex with a multitude of caves, many of which are open to the outside for various reasons (collapses, shearings). Over the course of time, various sediments have accumulated through these openings , for example soil, dust, pollen, remains of animals or excrement that has often filled in the entrances. In many cases, these were also closed by subsequent collapses, with the interior remaining intact until new openings were made.

history

First discoveries in the 19th century

The first systematic explorations of the karst system of the Cueva Mayor ( Spanish for 'largest cave') took place in the middle of the 19th century. However, the cave had been known and visited for a long time. In 1863, Felipe Ariño applied for ownership of the cave. Five years later, in 1868, Pedro Sampayo and Mariano Zuaznávar published a detailed description of the cave in which they first described the so-called Sima de los Huesos (Spanish for 'bone pit'). This is mentioned again in 1890 in an application for a permit for mining in other areas of the Cueva Mayor . In a similar way, a multitude of looting and destruction of the cave interior followed.

The railroad

An old quarry near the excavations

Towards the end of the 19th century, a railway line was moved from the Sierra de la Demanda to Burgos due to mining. The Sierra Company Ltd., founded shortly before by Richard Preece Williams, was founded in 1896 . granted permission to build the narrow-gauge line from Monterrubio de la Demanda to Villafría near Burgos. The purpose of the railway line was to transport coal and iron from the Sierra de la Demanda to the connection point with the Burgos- Bilbao line , and from there to the Basque ironworks . The total length was 65 kilometers, construction was completed in 1901.

Originally, the route should not run through the Sierra de Atapuerca. For unknown reasons, the tracks nevertheless ran through the southwestern part of the Sierra, through a deep trench half a kilometer long and up to 20 meters deep. This trench crossed numerous buried caves with Pleistocene sediments, which exposed them and their stratification was clearly visible.

According to the contract, the railway line should not only be used for mining; as a condition for the support of the project by the Provincial Council, the Sierra Company had to undertake to transport passengers and merchandise. Because of the high prices imposed by Ferrocarriles del Norte , the railway never managed to consolidate itself economically.

Around 1910 the railway line ceased operations. In 1917 the successor company of the Sierra Company , the Sociedad Vasco-Castellana , went bankrupt and finally dissolved. Bridges, embankments, tunnels and stations on the line have been preserved to this day. The railway ditch was used as a quarry from around 1950, and some of the sites were destroyed.

First excavations

Entrance to the excavations at the railway trench

In 1964, Francisco Jordá Cerdá, Professor of Archeology at the University of Salamanca , initiated the first excavations, which, however, came to a standstill shortly afterwards. Eight years later, a group of speleologists called Grupo Espeleológico Edelweiss found the so-called Galería del Sílex ( Spanish for 'flint gallery '), which contains remains of burial rites and paintings from the Bronze Age.

In 1973 JM Appellániz began the first of a total of eleven excavations at the entrance to the Cueva Mayor .

Current research

In 1976 the mining engineer Trinidad de Torres Pérez-Hidalgo, who was doing his doctoral thesis on bear fossils , approached the anthropologist Emiliano Aguirre with various human remains that he had found at one of the sites in the Sierra, in the Sima de los Huesos . In 1980 the excavations began in the Galería de Silex , which lasted over ten years. In 1984 the systematic excavations began in the Sima de los Huesos .

In 1990 Emiliano Aguirre retired and the management was transferred to a team consisting of Juan Luis Arsuaga , José María Bermúdez de Castro and Eudald Carbonell Roura . Since then, stone tools of Mode 1 ( Oldowan ) have been found on the floor of the Gran Dolina (Spanish for 'large sinkhole'). Shortly afterwards, in 1992, various human skulls appeared in the Sima de los Huesos , including the famous number 5 skull, which made the site a place of international scientific importance for the study of human evolution. It was in honor of Miguel Indurain in the name Miguelón baptized.

1994 and 1995 unearthed a significant number of Mode 1 stone implements and human remains, all dated 800,000 years ago, confirming very early human occupation in Europe. The following year, the examination of traces on the bones confirmed that ritual cannibalism was being practiced. This is the oldest reference to cannibalism in Europe. The excavations began in the Sima del Elefante (Spanish for 'elephant pit').

The year 1997 was of great importance for the archaeological site, because in that year a new human species was described with the homo antecessor . The studies have been awarded important prizes, the Prince of Asturias Prize and the Premio de Ciencias Sociales de Castilla y León .

The year 1998 brought the certainty that the remains found in the Sima de los Huesos , which were ascribed to Homo heidelbergensis , belong to human beings with the capacity for abstraction and symbolic action, who also pose questions of a mystical nature. This can be concluded from the discovery of an Excalibur baptized, unused hand ax (mode 2), which was made from a valuable material and added to the burial of a group member.

In 1999 the excavations began in the Cueva El Mirador . In the following year, the Sierra gained UNESCO World Heritage status . At the same time, remains of stone tools were found in the Sima del Elefante , which were dated to an age of one million years. A new species of rodent was also named, Microtus ((Allophaiomys)) lavocati . The excavations at the entrance of the Cueva Mayor have resumed. The Gran Dolina released a new species of cave bear , the Ursus dolinensis , the remains of which were found in layer TD4.

Archaeological sites of the Sierra de Atapuerca

Archaeological site of Atapuerca
UNESCO world heritage
National territory:	Spain
Type:	Culture
Criteria :	iii, v
Surface:	284 ha
Reference No .:	989
UNESCO region :	Europe and North America
History of enrollment
Enrollment:	2000  (session 24)

In the second half of the 19th century, some finds were made that suggested the archaeological richness of the area. However, it was not until the last quarter of the 20th century that comprehensive and systematic studies were carried out. Only now did it become clear that the area of ​​discovery was one of the most important in Europe and one of the most important in the world, in which finds were unearthed that have changed the concept of human history. Remains from a period from the Old Pleistocene (with an age of more than one million years) to the Holocene (current epoch) have been found that provide information about fauna, flora and climate. This archaeological complex was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO (2000) and received the Prince of Asturias Prize for Scientific and Technical Research (1997).

The archaeological sites are exceptional for their wealth of fossils, their good state of preservation and their scientific importance. The stone implements found cover all technological stages, from the most primitive forms of stone processing to specimens from the Bronze Age . A new species of cave bear, the Ursus dolinensis , is also found.

However, the most important finds are the remains of representatives of the genus Homo . They can be found in various excavations, which is unusual. Among them are the finds called Homo antecessor by their Spanish discoverers , dated to an age of 1.1 million years. However, other researchers place these older findings on Homo erectus and the younger ones on Homo heidelbergensis .

In the following, the most important finds and the conclusions that they allow about the prehistory are described. Particularly noteworthy are the finds from the railway ditch ( Sima del Elefante , Galería , Gran Dolina ) as well as those from the karst system of the Cueva Mayor and the Cueva del Silo , such as the Portalón , the Galería de Silex and the Sima de los Huesos . Next to it is the Cueva El Mirador , a cave located in the extreme south-east of the Sierra, which apparently has no connection with the aforementioned karst system. In addition to more than 50 sites further afield (such as the Valle de las Orquídeas y Hundidero , where excavations have only recently started), there is a considerable number of megalithic systems ("barrows") in the area , both in the Sierra and in the Surroundings.

Railway ditch

Site plan of the excavations in the railway trench

Location of the excavation sites in the railway trench (after the visible protective roofs): (1) Entrance to the trench; (2) Sima del Elefante ; (3) gallery ; (4) Gran Dolina

Sima del Elefante (TE)

The site of the Sima del Elefante , also known as Trinchera del Elefante , is in the railway ditch and is the first excavation site to be encountered from the south entrance of the ditch. In connection with the karst complex of Cueva Mayor / Cueva del Silo , it is located at the end of the lower gallery, although the sedimentological relationship between the two places is still unclear. It should be a karst gallery over 15 meters high and 18 meters maximum width. The name of the cave goes back to the appearance of some fossils in 2001, which were initially attributed to elephants. However, subsequent research showed that they came from rhinos. In later excavations, the ankle bone of an elephant was finally found , so that the presence of elephants in the fossil store was also proven.

The Sima del Elefante is the site of the railway ditch, where systematic excavations were last started. Its 21 meter thick sediment layer covers the entire period of human settlement in the Sierra, corresponding to the Pleistocene. Its lower levels are the oldest in the entire Sierra. They are up to 3.5 meters below the actual depth of the railway ditch and are over a million years old (Old Pleistocene). In these depths, animal remains and stone tools were found, which proves the presence of hominini in an era before that in which Homo antecessor / Homo heidelbergensis lived in the Gran Dolina (about 780,000 years). In addition, traces of cuts were found on some remains of bones, which were left by stone tools when fleshed, from which conclusions can be drawn about the diet of these hominini. In the higher excavation layers, stone instruments of Mode 3 ( Middle Palaeolithic ) were found, which are ascribed to Neanderthals, along with fossils of horses and deer.

In March 2008, new finds of remains of Homo antecessor in the Sima del Elefante were announced. It is a part of the jawbone of an individual around 20 years old and 32 flint tools of the Oldowan type (mode 1). They were dated to 1.2 million years and are therefore much older than the finds from the Gran Dolina . While older European finds from southern France and Italy are still controversial, the finds from the Sima del Elefante are considered the oldest reliable evidence of the presence of humans in Europe.

Galería and Covacha de los Zarpazos (TG-TN-TZ)

Stone tools from the gallery

Excavation work in the Covacha de los Zarpazos , 2006

The Galería was the first of the sites in the railway ditch that was systematically excavated. It is an underground gallery (section TG) from which a pit-shaped chimney (section TN) leads to the outside. The entrance seems to have been on the left and is called Covacha de los Zarpazos ( Spanish: 'Cave of Paws') (Section TZ).

The chimney, created by the collapse of the gallery roof, became a natural trap into which many animals fell (or were pushed into by hunters), preying on humans and other carnivores.

The finds in the Galería cover a period of 200,000–400,000 years. Five sedimentary phases have been identified (TGI-TGV), with a strong human presence in the third. In that phase, 13 different layers of human habitation were identified, in which a variety of stone implements of Mode 2 ( Acheuléen ) with remains of deer, horses, bison and rhinos appeared. The bones of the animals found bear bite marks from bears, lions, foxes and lynxes. A skull fragment from the epoch of Homo heidelbergensis was also found.

Gran Dolina (TD)

2008 excavation campaign. Most of the people are gathered on the TD10 level. There was a camp of Homo heidelbergensis there . The woman in the red clothing below the wooden walkways works on level TD-6, where the first remains of Homo antecessor at this site were found

Skull fragments of a young homo antecessor

The site of the Gran Dolina is located inside the railway ditch and is the best known because it was in it that the first remains of fossils were discovered, which were later identified as Homo antecessor . Eleven stratigraphic layers are distinguished in 18 meters of sediments. They span a time span from a million years ago (layer TD1) to 200,000 years ago (layer TD11).

In the lower layers, remains of carnivorous animals were found, such as saber-toothed tigers and spotted hyenas (in both cases the oldest records of the species in Europe) as well as a new bear species, an ancestor of the cave bear , which was named Ursus dolinensis after it was found. Just like at the bottom of the Sima del Elefante , stone tools of Mode 1 with an age of one million years were found in layer TD4 .

In 1994, the remains of what was later described by its discoverers as a new human species were found in layer TD6, Homo antecessor . Examination of the bones found shows traces of cuts that originate from human tools. From this it was concluded that those ancient residents of the Gran Dolina practiced cannibalism. In the following layer, TD7, the change in the earth's magnetic field 780,000 years ago can be seen, which defines the boundary between the Old and Middle Pleistocene ( Brunhes - Matuyama magnetic reversal). In the layer TD10 there are remains of stone tools of mode 3, albeit only rudimentary. Further remains of Homo antecessor were found, which confirm the importance and richness of the site.

Cueva Mayor

Sima de los Huesos

Skull No. 5 of the Sima de los Huesos , excavated in 1992. The jaw appeared in a later excavation.

The Sima de los Huesos site is a small chamber at the bottom of a 13-meter-deep hole at the deepest point of the Cueva Mayor cave , in which a large number of hominini and animal bones have been found. The sediments from the Middle Pleistocene are superbly preserved; a dating from 2007 initially calculated an age of 600,000 years, in 2014 an age of 430,000 years was published and in 2019 finally a time span of 455,000 ± 17,000 to 440,000 ± 15,000 years.

What makes the site so important are more than 6,700 fossils belonging to a group of 28 very well preserved individuals of the species Homo heidelbergensis of all ages and genders. These finds represent over 90 percent of all human fossils from the Middle Pleistocene that have been discovered to date and are the largest collection of hominine fossils discovered in the world to date.

Numerous skulls stand out from these finds, including skull no. 5, the world's best-preserved skull of a Homo heidelbergensis , popularly named in honor of Miguel Indurain's Miguelón . Numerous bones from a wide variety of body regions were found, including a pelvic bone (pelvis) baptized with the name "Elvis" and even small auditory bones . "Elvis" (the name alludes to Elvis Presley ) is the most complete pelvic bone in the fossil record. He belonged to a 1.75 m tall and 95 kg heavy male individual. From this it was concluded that Homo heidelbergensis was as tall as modern humans, but of a more robust physique. The pelvic cavity was larger, which made it easier for women to give birth.

In 2013, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology succeeded in extracting and sequencing mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from a thigh bone (femur XIII) that was estimated to be around 400,000 years old using a molecular clock . Quite unexpectedly, it was shown that the owner of the bone had a common ancestor with the Denisovans about 300,000 years before his death and that the mtDNA sample examined was more similar to these Denisovans than to the Neanderthals . In 2015, however, the analysis of DNA from the cell nuclei of two fossils revealed a greater genetic proximity to the Neanderthals than to the Denisovans and the anatomically modern Homo sapiens . The lines to the Neanderthal man and the Denisova man must have separated earlier than 430,000 years ago. DNA comparisons made in 2017, in particular with an approximately 124,000 year old Neanderthal thigh bone, found as early as 1937 in the Hohlenstein-Stadel-Höhle ( Swabian Alb near Ulm ) suggest a scenario that a 'vanguard' of the .220,000 to 470,000 years ago modern humans came to Europe from Africa and mingled with the Neanderthals so that their Denisova-like mtDNA was replaced by their own 'modern'. This would explain the paradox that in all of the more recent Neanderthal finds, including that from the Swabian Alb, the mtDNA features of modern humans, while the core DNA shows Denisova features, which led to the original misjudgment in 2013.

One possible explanation for the large collection of skeletons is that the place was a burial site. Only one stone tool was found under the bones, an unused hand ax made of quartzite and ocher (no other tool made of this material was found in the whole complex of Atapuerca). It was discovered in 1998 and given the name Excalibur . This could be an indication of a funeral ritual.

Among the carnivorous fossils are the remains of more than 180 individuals of the bear species Ursus deningeri .

The Cueva Mayor excavation is of unique importance worldwide because of the finds.

Portalón

The excavation called Portalón at the entrance of the Cueva Mayor has made it possible to draw conclusions about a significant part of the Bronze Age (1680 BC - 890 BC). The most relevant are the ornate ceramics with more than 400 iconographic motifs, various bone and bronze tools as well as jewelry made of bone, horn and ivory . The excavation was continued until reaching the New Pleistocene , but the most interesting are the finds from the Neolithic , and especially from the Bronze Age. A new genome study of Bronze Age (3300-2550 BCE) people in the El Portalón Cave shows their close relationship with other early farmers in Europe and also compares them with other latest genome results.

Galeria de Sílex

The Galería de Sílex , which was discovered in 1964 by the cave exploration group Grupo Espeleológico Edelweiss from Burgos, has also brought to light spectacular remains from the Bronze Age . It had been locked for a time near that era, so the soil and rock carvings were exceptionally well preserved. A large number of human and animal remains with stone and bone tools as well as ceramics were found in one of their chambers , indicating activities of a ritual nature. The walls have an abundance of paintings and engravings, and some of the symbols used there also appear on the ceramics.

Other excavation sites of the Atapuerca complex

Cueva del Mirador

At the Cueva del Mirador site , which is furthest from the archaeological complex, remains from the Bronze Age were found. The discovery of a burial site for up to six individuals of different ages and genders, dated 3,670 years ago, indicates that this cave was used as a burial site.

Valle des las Orquídeas

The Valle des las Orquídeas site is in the open air. Their age is 27,000 to 30,000 years, a period that belongs to the Pleistocene . During the Neolithic it was constantly populated, probably because of the good availability of resources and the good overview of a certain area of ​​the territory.

literature

• Emiliano Aguirre, Eudald Carbonell, José María Bermúdez de Castro: El Hombre fósil de Ibeas y el Pleistoceno de la Sierra de Atapuerca (I) . Junta de Castilla y León, Valladolid 1987, ISBN 84-505-7066-2 .
• Eudald Carbonell, S. Giralt, B. Márquez et al .: El conjunto lito-técnico de la Sierra de Atapuerca en el marco del Pleistoceno Medio europeo, Evolución humana en Europa y los yacimientos de la sierra de Atapuerca. Congreso Celebrado in Medina del Campo in 1992 . Junta de Castilla y León, Valladolid 1995, ISBN 84-7846-464-6 .
• Marcos Sáiz, Francisco Javier: La Sierra de Atapuerca y el Valle del Arlanzón: Patrones de Asentamiento prehistóricos. Editorial Dossoles, Burgos 2006, ISBN 84-87528-47-3 .
• Rolf Quam: Yacimientos de la sierra de Atapuerca. Gráficas Navaprin, SL, Burgos 2007. 24-page brochure, ed. from the Tourism Office of the Province of Burgos (PDF; 1.6 MB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Atapuerca aumenta aún más la antigüedad del primer europeo. ( Memento of December 11, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) In: El Periódico de Catalunya of March 27, 2008] (Spanish)
2. ↑ Jean-Yves Crochet et al. a .: Une nouvelle faune de vertébrés continentaux, associée à des artifacts dans le Pléistocène inférieur de l'Hérault (Sud de la France), ver 1.57 Ma. Comptes Rendus Palevol 8, 2009, pp. 725-736 doi: 10.1016 / j.crpv.2009.06.004
3. ↑ Marta Arzarello, Federica Marcolini, Giulio Pavia, Marco Pavia, Carmelo Petronio, Mauro Petrucci, Lorenzo Rook, Raffaele Sardella: Evidence of earliest human occurrence in Europe: the site of Pirro Nord (Southern Italy). Natural Sciences 94, 2007, pp. 107–112
4. ^ Eudald Carbonell et al .: The first hominin of Europe. In: Nature , Volume 452, 2008, pp. 465-469, doi: 10.1038 / nature06815
5. ↑ James L. Bischoff, Ross W. Williams, Robert J. Rosenbauer, Arantza Aramburu, Juan Luis Arsuaga , Nuria García and Gloria Cuenca-Bescós: High-resolution U-series dates from the Sima de los Huesos hominids yields 600 kyrs: implications for the evolution of the early Neanderthal lineage. In: Journal of Archaeological Science. Volume 34, No. 5, 2007, pp. 763-770, doi: 10.1016 / j.jas.2006.08.003 .
6. ↑ JL Arsuaga et al .: Neandertal roots: Cranial and chronological evidence from Sima de los Huesos. In: Science. Volume 344, No. 6190, 2014, pp. 1358–1363, doi: 10.1126 / science.1253958 , full text (PDF)
7. ↑ Martina Demuro et al .: New bracketing luminescence ages constrain the Sima de los Huesos hominin fossils (Atapuerca, Spain) to MIS 12. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 131, 2019, pp. 76-95, doi: 10.1016 / j.jhevol.2018.12.003
8. ↑ Juan Luis Arsuaga et al .: Postcranial morphology of the middle Pleistocene humans from Sima de los Huesos, Spain. In: PNAS. Volume 112, No. 37, 2015, pp. 11524–11529, doi: 10.1073 / pnas.1514828112
9. ^ Jean-Jacques Hublin: How to build a Neandertal. In: Science. Volume 44, No. 6190, 2014, pp. 1338–1339, doi: 10.1126 / science.1255554
10. ^ JL Arsuaga, I. Martínez, A. Gracia, JM Carretero, E. Carbonell: Three new human skulls from the Sima de los Huesos Middle Pleistocene site in Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain. In: Nature. Volume 362, 1993, pp. 534-537, doi: 10.1038 / 362534a0 .
11. ↑ JL Arsuaga, CL Lorenzo, JM Carretero, A. Gracia, I. Martínez, N. García, JM Bermúdez de Castro, E. Carbonell: A complete human pelvis from the Middle Pleistocene of Spain. In: Nature. Volume 399, 1999, pp. 255-258, doi: 10.1038 / 20430 .
12. ↑
    • Matthias Meyer et al .: A mitochondrial genome sequence of a hominin from Sima de los Huesos. In: Nature. Volume 505, No. 7483, 2014, pp. 403-406, doi: 10.1038 / nature12788
    • Max Planck Society of December 4, 2013: Oldest human DNA deciphered.
13. ↑ Ewen Callaway: Hominin DNA baffles experts . In: Nature. Volume 504, 2013, p. 16 f., Doi: 10.1038 / 504016a
14. ↑
    • Ewen Callaway: Oldest Ancient-Human DNA Details Dawn of Neandertals .
    • Matthias Meyer, Juan-Luis Arsuaga et al .: Nuclear DNA sequences from the Middle Pleistocene Sima de los Huesos hominins , in: Nature. Volume 531, edition 7595, 2016, pp. 504–507, PMID 26976447 , doi: 10.1038 / nature17405
    • Ann Gibbons: Humanity's long, lonely road. In: Science. Volume 349, No. 6254, 2015, p. 1270, doi: 10.1126 / science.349.6254.1270-a
    • DNA from Neandertal relative may shake up human family tree. On: sciencemag.org of September 11, 2015, doi: 10.1126 / science.aad1740
15. ↑
    • Cosimo Posth, Christoph Wißing, Keiko Kitagawa, Luca Pagani, Laura van Holstein, Fernando Racimo, Kurt Wehrberger, Nicholas J. Conard, Claus Joachim Kind, Hervé Bocherens and Johannes Krause: Deeply divergent archaic mitochondrial genome provides lower time boundary for African gene flow into Neanderthals. In: Nature Communications 8, 16046, July 4, 2017, doi: 10.1038 / ncomms16046
    • The mysterious liaison of the Neanderthal man . ( Memento from November 7, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) dpa report in Sächsische Zeitung online , July 6, 2017
    • Nadja Podbregar: Human history is getting more complicated. On: Wissenschaft.de from July 4, 2017
16. ↑ Sima de los huesos and hominids. On: modernhumanorigins.com , accessed September 2, 2015
17. ↑ Torsten Günther, Cristina Valdiosera, Helena Malmström et al .: Ancient genomes link early farmers from Atapuerca in Spain to modern-day Basques. In: PNAS. Volume 112, No. 38, 2015, pp. 11917-11922; doi: 10.1073 / pnas.1509851112

Coordinates: 42 ° 21 '0.3 "  N , 3 ° 31' 10.1"  W.