Gruta da Aroeira

39.505555555556 -8.6158333333333Coordinates: 39 ° 30 ′ 20 ″ N , 8 ° 36 ′ 57 ″ W.

Gruta da Aroeira

The Gruta da Aroeira is an archaeological and paleoanthropological site in the central limestone massif of the Portuguese Estremadura . The cave is located in the village of Almonda, community Zibreira , county Torres Novas in Santarém District . It is a limestone cave from which u. a. Stone utensils of the Paleolithic Acheulean culture were recovered, as well as the westernmost find of a skull from this era, the fossil Aroeira 3 . The find was reported in the international press after its publication in spring 2017.

exploration

The Gruta da Aroeira is part of the Almonda karst system , which is named after a tributary of the Tejo , the Rio Almonda , whose source is a few dozen meters below the cave. It is part of a labyrinthine network of partially collapsed corridors and caves with Pleistocene deposits and various buried entrances. When the excavation work began in 1998, the entrance to the Gruta da Aroeira was also buried by broken stone from the former ceiling and was uncovered by 2002. In the course of these excavations, two hominine teeth were recovered, a relatively large left lower jaw - canine tooth (Aroeira 1) and a left upper jaw - wisdom tooth (Aroeira 2), the age of which was determined to be around 400,000 years, as well as several hand axes and remains of plants.

The excavation work was resumed in 2013, during which the partially preserved skull Aroeira 3 was discovered in 2014. It was embedded in a larger block of breccia and transported to Madrid , where it was exposed.

The deposits in the cave are around four meters thick and were divided by the researchers into three stratigraphic layers, from the bottom of which the fossil Aroeira 3 was recovered. Various independent age determinations resulted in an age of around 400,000 years for this find and an assignment to the oxygen isotope level MIS 11c. The most recent deposits in the cave have been dated between 60,000 and 40,000 years old (MIS 3c).

Based on the dating, the hominine fossils can be attributed to the species Homo heidelbergensis .

bibliography

Daura, J., Sanz, M., Arsuaga, JLJL, Hoffmann, DLDL, Quam, RMRM, Ortega, MCMC, Santos, E., Gómez, S., Rubio, A., Villaescusa, L., Souto, P. , Mauricio, J., Rodrigues, F., Ferreira, A., Godinho, P., Trinkaus, E., Zilhão, J., 2017c. New Middle Pleistocene hominin cranium from Gruta da Aroeira (Portugal). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, 3397-3402. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1619040114
Daura, J., Sanz, M., Deschamps, M., Matias, H., Igreja, M., Villaescusa, L., Gómez, S., Rubio, A., Souto, P., Rodrigues, F., Zilhão, J., 2018. A 400,000-year-old Acheulean assemblage associated with the Aroeira-3 human cranium (Gruta da Aroeira, Almonda karst system, Portugal). Comptes Rendus Palevol 17, 594-615. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crpv.2018.03.003
Sanz, M., Sala, N., Daura, J., Pantoja-Pérez, A., Santos, E., Zilhão, J., Arsuaga, JL, 2018. Taphonomic inferences about Middle Pleistocene hominins: The human cranium of Gruta da Aroeira (Portugal). American Journal of Physical Anthropology 167, 615-627. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23689
Sanz, M., Daura, J., Cabanes, D., Égüez, N., Carrancho, Á., Badal, E., Souto, P., Rodrigues, F., Zilhão, J., 2020. Early evidence of fire in south-western Europe: the Acheulean site of Gruta da Aroeira (Torres Novas, Portugal). Scientific Reports 10, 12053. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-68839-w

Web links

New Portuguese skull may be an early relative of Neandertals. On: sciencemag.org of March 13, 2017 (with a picture of the skull)

Individual evidence

↑ Joan Daura et al. : New Middle Pleistocene hominin cranium from Gruta da Aroeira (Portugal). In: PNAS. Advance online publication of March 13, 2017. doi: 10.1073 / pnas.1619040114 and Supporting Information .

↑ "The primeval man from Portugal" , article from March 16, 2017 in the Hamburger Abendblatt , accessed on March 22, 2017

↑ Crânio de 400 mil anos é o fóssil humano mais antigo descoberto em Portugal [“The oldest human fossil found in Portugal with a 400,000 year old skull”], article from March 13, 2017 in the Portuguese newspaper Público , accessed on March 22, 2017

^ Erik Trinkaus et al .: Later Middle Pleistocene human remains from the Almonda Karstic system, Torres Novas, Portugal. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 45, No. 3, 2003, pp. 219-226, doi: 10.1016 / j.jhevol.2003.07.001

[1] Joan Daura et al. : New Middle Pleistocene hominin cranium from Gruta da Aroeira (Portugal). In: PNAS. Advance online publication of March 13, 2017. doi: 10.1073 / pnas.1619040114 and Supporting Information .

[2] "The primeval man from Portugal" , article from March 16, 2017 in the Hamburger Abendblatt , accessed on March 22, 2017

[3] Crânio de 400 mil anos é o fóssil humano mais antigo descoberto em Portugal [“The oldest human fossil found in Portugal with a 400,000 year old skull”], article from March 13, 2017 in the Portuguese newspaper Público , accessed on March 22, 2017

[4] Erik Trinkaus et al .: Later Middle Pleistocene human remains from the Almonda Karstic system, Torres Novas, Portugal. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 45, No. 3, 2003, pp. 219-226, doi: 10.1016 / j.jhevol.2003.07.001