At Sima de las Palomas del Cabezo Gordo (Murcia, Spain) remains of several Neanderthals have been excavated recently. From about 50,000 years ago articulated parts of 3 adult skeletons (including skulls with mandibles, vertebral column, rib cages, shoulder blades, hip bones, upper and lower limbs, hands and feet, often in anatomical connexion) were excavated from the lower part of a cemented accumulation of scree and large stones (éboulis) sloping downwards and inwards into the cavity, along with burnt bones of large mammals and Mousterian implements. The excavation of the skeletons is the subject of this paper (palaeoanthropological skeletal descriptions are soon to be published elsewhere). Behind the cemented scree there accumulated a layer of finer sediment containing burnt animal bones, followed by more fine sediment that filled the cavity up to the overhanging rock roof and contained isolated teeth and unburnt bone fragments of Neanderthals, including 3 mandibles, as well as Mousterian implements and faunal remains, all dating from before 40,000 years ago. Altogether, at least 9 Neanderthals are represented by finds from the site (including 3 unstratified mandibles), ranging from babies to adults. Dating methods include radiocarbon, uranium-series, and optical luminescence. Pollen analysis implies conditions less severe than those of the Heinrich 4 cold oscillation at 40,000 years ago.
Members of our species (Homo sapiens) arrived in Europe several millennia earlier than previously thought. This was the conclusion by a team of researchers, after carrying out a re-analyses of two ancient deciduous teeth.
These teeth were discovered in 1964 in the “Grotta del Cavallo”, a cave in southern Italy. Since their discovery they have been attributed to Neanderthals, but this new study suggests they belong to anatomically modern humans. Chronometric analysis, carried out by the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford, shows that the layers within which the teeth were found date to ~43,000-45,000 cal BP. This means that the human remains are older than any other known European modern humans. The research work was published in the renowned science journal Nature.
]A study of bird remains from the same cave that yielded bones of a mini human species called Homo floresiensis and nicknamed the hobbit has cast new light on the lost world of this enigmatic human relative. The findings hint that the hobbits’ island home was quite ecologically diverse, and raise the possibility that the tiny humans had to defend their kills from giant carnivorous birds.
Google translate this page if need be; it’s worth it. Also, it has a great map of lots of LP sites.
If, in Part One , we looked for the earliest evidence of settlement in the Iberian Peninsula, now we’ll try to look for the oldest evidence of human presence on the European continent, and answer three important questions: 1) When did humans arrive on the European continent? (2) What was the route taken by humans, or their point of origin? (3) What were the reasons for the expansion and dissemination of the first European populations?
Si en la primera parte buscábamos las evidencias más antiguas del poblamiento en la península ibérica, ahora de lo que se trata es buscar las evidencias de presencia humana más antiguas del continente europeo, y responder a tres cuestiones importantes: 1) ¿En qué momento se produjo la llegada de los seres humanos al continente europeo? 2) ¿Cuál fue la ruta que siguieron los seres humanos, o el punto de origen? 3) ¿cuales fueron las causas que motivaron la expansión y difusión de las primeras poblaciones europeas?.
LAS VEGAS — A famous trail of footprints once thought to have been left behind by a family of three human ancestors may have actually been made by four individuals traveling at different times.
In a new examination of Laetoli in northern Tanzania, where a 3.6 million-year-old track of footprints of thebipedal human ancestor Australopithecus is preserved, researchers now argue that the classic understanding of this site is mistaken. The footprints have been buried since the mid-1990s for preservation, but a section recently opened for study as Tanzanian officials make plans for a museum on the site.
The fossils seemed hardly worth a second look. The one from England was only a piece of jawbone with three teeth, and the other, from southern Italy, was nothing more than two infant teeth. But scientists went ahead, re-examining them with refined techniques, and found that one specimen’s age had previously been significantly underestimated and that the other’s dating and identity had been misinterpreted.
We send messages to one another all the time – in the way we dress, the accessories we choose, our body language, the sounds we make. Symbols are key to what sets us apart from other species as modern human beings, and an important clue to figuring out where we originated… and this could very well have been where we call home today – Southern Africa.
On Tuesday, October 25, the Origins Centre was host to a presentation that delved into the mysteries surrounding the origins of behaviourally modern human beings.
