Visogliano

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Visogliano (Italy)
Visogliano
Visogliano
Geographical location of Visogliano

Visogliano is one of the oldest archaeological sites in Italy , and the oldest in the northeast of the country. The oldest human remains in the country, around 500,000 years old, were also found. These are fragments of a strongly pronounced jaw and two teeth . Finally, the first traces of fire use could be proven.

Location, discovery, museum location

The site near Trieste near the border with Slovenia was discovered in 1974 by an amateur named Alvaro Marcucci.

The finds are in the Trieste Museum of Natural History .

Museum of Natural History in Trieste

Rubble tool culture, ecology

500,000 years ago, the region was characterized by mixed forests , more precisely with hornbeams , hazelnuts , linden and wing nuts . Homo sapiens left behind an assortment of stone tool remains typical of the Italian Pebble Culture , the Italian rubble tool culture .

Proof of fire use

Visogliano is one of the places where it could be made very likely that cancellous bone , a form of bone substance, was used to maintain fire. This sponge-like substance made up of fine trabeculae lies inside the bones and is particularly combustible when the bone marrow there is removed. Dry wood was used to ignite the fuel obtained in this way. Smaller bone fragments were preferred because of their better flammability. The proportion of bones that show traces of burns and that are smaller than 2 cm therefore increases to 99.8% at some sites, such as Castanet ( Dordogne ). On the other hand, compact bones, which burn much worse, show such traces much less often. The technology is related to the fact that bones have to be cooked for two to three hours in order to remove the coveted fat. Such spots can be recognized by the fact that next to the small, burned bones there are many stones that were blown by the heat of the fire and a depression. Waterproof wood or bark, an animal's stomach or hide was placed in this recess to hold the water. Often there were also heavy stones with which the large bones had previously been smashed. Otherwise, can only with the use of fire Neanderthals prove the means of fire Pech won (pitch) from a bark absence of oxygen by covering the fire pit. This bad luck was found at the German archaeological site in Königsaue , but is relatively young at around 80,000 years old. Bitumen was also treated in this way in order to obtain a kind of adhesive from it, as can be seen from 42,000 to 70,000 year old remains in Umm el Tlel , Syria . In Visogliano, however, the tracks are much older. The traces of fire come from the oxygen isotope level MIS 11 or 13, which corresponds to an age of 427,000 to 528,000 years.

Web links

literature

  • Francesco Mallegni, Carlo Tozzi, Giovanni Boschian: The "Homo erectus" site of Visogliano shelter (Trieste, NE Italy) , in: Los homínidos y su entorno en el pleistoceno inferior y medio de Eurasia: actas del Congreso Internacional de Paleontología Humana, Orce 1995 , 1999, 437-442.
  • Flaviano Fanfani: Macroneomys sp. (Soricidae, Mammalia) from Visogliano Shelter (Trieste, Northern Italy), a Middle Pleistocene human occupation site , in: Acta Zoologica Cracoviensia 41 (1998) 125-132.
  • Laura Abbazzi, Flaviano Fanfani, Marco P. Ferretti, Lorenzo Rook, L. Cattani, Federico Masini, Francesco Mallegni, Fabio Negrino, Carlo Tozzi: New Human Remains of Archaic Homo sapiens and Lower Palaeolithic Industries from Visogliano (Duino Aurisina, Trieste, Italy ) , in: Journal of Archaeological Science 27 (2000) 1173-1186.
  • Alberto Rubini: Geoarcheologia del sito paleolitico inferiore di Visogliano , tesi, Università degli Studi Ca 'Foscari di Venezia, 2007–2008.
  • Christophe Falguères, Jean-Jacques Bahaina, Carlo Tozzi, Giovanni Boschian, Jean-Michel Dolo, Norbert Mercier, Hélène Valladas, Yuji Yokoyama: ESR / U-series chronology of the Lower Palaeolithic palaeoanthropological site of Visogliano, Trieste, Italy , in: Quaternary Geochronology 3.4 (2008) 390-398.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Christophe Falguères, Jean-Jacques Bahain, Carlo Tozzi, Giovanni Boschian, Jean-Michel Dolo, Norbert Mercier, Hélène Valladas, Yuji Yokoyama: ESR / U-series chronology of the Lower Palaeolithic palaeoanthropological site of Visogliano, Trieste, Italy , in: Quaternary Geochronology 3.4 (Nov 2008) 390-398.
  2. ↑ Giorgio Manzi, Donatella Magri, Maria Rita Palombo: Early-Middle Pleistocene environmental changes and human evolution in the Italian peninsula , in: Quaternary Science Reviews 30: 11-12 (June 2011) 1420-1438.
  3. ^ Wil Roebroeks , Paola Villa: On the earliest evidence for habitual use of fire in Europe , in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 14, 2011.

Coordinates: 45 ° 44 ′ 0 ″  N , 13 ° 45 ′ 0 ″  E