Torralba and Ambrona
Coordinates: 41 ° 9 ′ 19.6 " N , 2 ° 29 ′ 52.4" W.
The hills of Torralba and Ambrona are located about 150 km northeast of Madrid in the Sierra de Guadarrama , in Spain . On the opposite hills there was an old Paleolithic hunting ground from around 400,000 BC. Chr.
First the bones and a tusk of an extinct species of elephant were found in 1888. In 1907 the Marques de Cerralbo found the remains of about 25 forest elephants . In 1961, the paleoanthropologist Francis Clark Howell (1925-2007) completely excavated the Torralba hill and partially excavated Ambrona.
The excavations uncovered numerous bones from around 50 elephants, deer, rhinos, wild horses and other animals. In addition to stone tools, rubble tools , hand axes , riving knives and knock-off devices , fragments of numerous conically tapered wooden sticks were found, some of which have incisions, chopping marks, traces of shine and fire-hardened points that indicate use as a thrust or throwing weapon.
A Homo erectus group had stayed here at least 10 times as the game passed here on its annual migration. Howell developed the following hypothesis: In driven hunts, elephants were mainly killed, which were apparently driven by grass fires into the swampy terrain of a nearby river, where they got stuck and could easily be killed. This hypothesis is now considered not to be supported by the findings.
The almost complete absence of the skulls of the prey and the discovery of the right half of an elephant, which was lying with the fur side up, while the left half was missing, is remarkable. The discovery of a tusk and five leg bones that formed a straight line while others formed a right angle is also a mystery. Perhaps they represent a hunting spell or ritual acts. Skeleton finds of Homo erectus and traces of its habitation, comparable to Terra Amata , were not found.
A visit to the Yacimiento-Museo Arqueológico de Ambrona is also recommended, it is located in Ctra. Torrabla-Miño de Medinaceli in 42230 Ambrona.
literature
- Francis Clark Howell: The Man of Ancient Times. Time-Life International, Frankfurt am Main, 1966
- Michael Alan Park: Biological Anthropology . McGraw Hill, Boston 2005, ISBN 0-07-286312-9 .