Spain dig yields ancient European

[Ferran]

Spain dig yields ancient European

By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News

The lower jaw could be from a female

Scientists have discovered the oldest human remains in western Europe.

A jawbone and teeth discovered at the famous Atapuerca site in northern Spain have been dated between 1.1 and 1.2 million years old.

The finds provide further evidence for the great antiquity of human occupation on the continent, the researchers write in the journal Nature.

Scientists also found stone tools and animal bones with tell-tale cut marks from butchering by humans.

The discovery comprises part of a human's lower jawbone. The remains of seven teeth were found still in place; an isolated tooth, belonging to the same individual, was also unearthed.

Its small size suggests it could have belonged to a female.

The find was made in the Sierra de Atapuerca, a region of gently rolling hills near the Spanish city of Burgos which contain a complex of ancient limestone caves.

See one view of human evolution

These caves have yielded abundant, well-preserved evidence of ancient occupation by humans and have been designated a Unesco World Heritage Site.

The new remains were unearthed at the archaeological site of Sima del Elefante, which lies just a few hundred metres from two other locations which have yielded remains of early Europeans.

"It is the oldest human fossil yet found in Western Europe," said co-author Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, director of Spain's National Research Centre on Human Evolution (CENIEH) in Burgos.

Ancient migration

Dr Bermudez de Castro told BBC News that the latest find had anatomical features linking it to earlier hominins (modern humans, their ancestors and relatives since divergence from apes) discovered in Dmanisi, Georgia - at the gates of Europe.

Several teeth were preserved with the jaw

The Georgian hominins lived some 1.7 million years ago and represent an early expansion of humans outside Africa.

The researchers therefore suggest that Western Europe was settled by a population of hominins coming from the east.

Once these early people had "won the West" they evolved into a distinct species - Homo antecessor, or "Pioneer Man", say the scientists.

The scientists now plan to investigate whether Pioneer Man might have been ancestral to Neanderthals and to even our own species Homo sapiens.

Chris Stringer, head of human origins at London's Natural History Museum, said that until more material was discovered from Atapuerca, he was cautious about assigning the new specimen to the species Homo antecessor.

But he added: "However the specimen is classified, when combined with the emerging archaeological evidence, it suggests that southern Europe began to be colonised from western Asia not long after humans had emerged from Africa - something which many of us would have doubted even five years ago."

The Spanish researchers used three different techniques to date the new fossils: palaeomagnetism, cosmogenic nuclide dating and biostratigraphy.

Dr Bermudez de Castro said the new find represented the earliest reliably dated evidence of human occupation in Europe.



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Source: BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Spain dig yields ancient European

[Galaico]

No Homo Antecessor nor Homo Heidelbergensis remains have been found out of Europe, and while most anthropologists may agree in that the Homo Antecessor could have originated in Africa and later moved to Europe, the Homo Heidelbergensis most probably appeared in Europe, and is unrelated to Africa, and therefore unrelated to the Homo Sapiens.

What could be possible is that a parallel evolution took place in Africa giving birth to a very similar hominid (Homo Rhodesiensis?), and both of them would roughly be classified as Homo Heidelbergensis, BUT they would be different hominids. Just like the Asian and Middle Eastern Neanderthals, who were not real Neanderthals but Neanderthaloids who had suffered a parallel and almost identical evolution process as the Neanderthals from Europe and shared a common ancestor (Homo Heidelbergensis) but were not exactly the same hominid.

[bioblitzkrieg]

I was under the impression that heidelbergensis originated in africa, and from the branch that migrated into europe through the middle east, thus sprang the neandertal, and from the branch that remained in 'east' africa archaic homo sapien emerged, with both neandertal and sapien sharing a commong heidelbergensis ancestor between 300,000-500,000 years ago.

But if like you said, Heidelbergensis originated from Europe with an ancestral migration of antecessor from africa, how would the timetable for sapien-neandertal divergence be able to exist, as the species before heidelbergensis 'antecessor' would therefore have to be the last common ancestor between sapien and neandertal, which seems too far back in time, unless your hypothesis also mentions homo sapiens as originating in europe alongside thier heidelbergensis ancestors or sapiens originating from another hominid that was heidelbergensis like in east africa.

though in a multiregional Sapien hypothesis, this answer could get quite complex, but please try to clarify, its highly interesting.

[Galaico]

The oldest Homo heidelbergensis is found in Heidelberg (Germany) and has an estimated Age of 530,000 years. Therefore it could be suggested that the Homo antecessor (the last ancestor of both Sapiens and Neanderthals) survived in Europe until more or less that age.

However the last common ancestor between both Sapiens and Neanderthals should have lived in Africa before Europe was colonised by the Homo antecessors. There are some hominid remains in Europe, as shown in the article, with an estimated age of more than a million years, but those belong to some intrepid "explorers" rather than to a permanent settlement, most anthropologists believe the effective colonisation of Europe took place about 800,000 years ago.

I don't believe in the Multi-regional theory at all, I'm an Outofafricaist , but I believe that the last common ancestor between Neanderthals and Sapiens lived 1,000,000-800,000 years ago.

This is the evolutionary scheme proposed by the Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain) Research team in 1997, probably the most accurate one until now: