Atapuerca and Early Hominin Sites in Spain | Early European History And Religion

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ATAPUERCA

Location of Atapuerca

Atapuerca in northern Spain is an anthropological and archaeological site designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2000 and home to some of the oldest hominin remains found in Europe. According to UNESCO: “The caves of the Sierra de Atapuerca contain a rich fossil record of the earliest human beings in Europe, from nearly one million years ago and extending up to the Common Era. They represent an exceptional reserve of data, the scientific study of which provides priceless information about the appearance and the way of life of these remote human ancestors. [Source: UNESCO World Heritage site website =]

The Archaeological Site of Atapuerca is located near the city of Burgos, in the Autonomous Community of Castilla y León, in the North of the Iberian Peninsula. The property encompasses 284.119 ha and contains a rich fossil record of the earliest human beings in Europe, from nearly one million years ago and extending into the Common Era. It constitutes an exceptional scientific reserve that provides priceless information about the appearance and way of life of these remote human ancestors. =

“The Sierra de Atapuerca sites provide unique testimony of the origin and evolution both of the existing human civilization and of other cultures that have disappeared. The evolutionary line or lines from the African ancestors of modern humankind are documented in these sites. The earliest and most abundant evidence of humankind in Europe is found in the Sierra de Atapuerca. The sites constitute an exceptional example of continuous human occupation, due to their special ecosystems and their geographical location. The fossil remains in the Sierra de Atapuerca are an invaluable reserve of information about the physical nature and the way of life of the earliest human communities in Europe. In addition, painted and engraved panels have been recorded, with geometrical motifs, hunting scenes, and anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures.

Henry McHenry wrote in Encyclopædia Britannica: Atapuerca is a “site of several limestone caves near Burgos in northern Spain, known for the abundant human (genus Homo) remains discovered there beginning in 1976. The site called Sima del Elefante (“Pit of the Elephant”) contains the earliest evidence of humans in western Europe—fragments of a jawbone and teeth date to 1.1–1.2 million years ago. The nearby site of Gran Dolina contains human remains dating to about 800,000 years ago and some of the earliest tools found in western Europe. Paleoanthropologists who first described the fossils attributed them to a new species, H. antecessor, which they proposed as the ancestor of modern humans (H. sapiens) owing to certain distinctly modern facial features. Other researchers, however, hesitate to accept this assertion and group the fossils with similar remains classified as H. heidelbergensis.” [Source: Henry McHenry, Encyclopædia Britannica]

Nearly a 100 hominin fossils from a 10-year-old boy and five other individuals and 200 stone tools were found in an 800,000 year old strata at the Sierra de Atapuerca's Gran Dolina site in northern Spain in 1994 and 1995. Some scientists describe this hominin as an entirely new species called “Homo Antecessor” (Antecessoris Latin for “explorer” or “pioneer”), which might be a common ancestor for both modern man an Neanderthals. The skull of the boy had features similar to both species, including a prominent jaw, prominent brow ridges and projecting face like Neanderthals and sunken cheekbones and tooth development similar to modern humans. Many paleontologists dismiss the claims because they say it is difficult draw to many conclusions from bones of children.

‘Early Europeans’ Lived 1.2 Million Years Ago in Northern Spain

Atapuerca

In 2008, scientists wrote in Nature that they had found an early European — a fragmentary hominin jawbone and some worn teeth, dated to 1.1 to 1.2 million years ago, at the at the Sima del Elefante cave site in the Sierra de Atapuerca. in northern Spain. The fragments are 300,000 years older than any previously found in Europe.José María Bermúdez de Castro at the National Research Centre on Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain, member of the research team that made the discovery, said that, although the new find pushes back the hominin fossil record in Europe, there is indirect evidence that hominins arrive in Europe even earlier. “[Stone tools from] Pirro Nord in Italy may be older than Sima del Elefante,” he says. “Likewise, the Barranco León and Fuente Nueva 3 Spanish sites have yielded stone tools probably 1.3 million years old.”[Source: Colin Barras, New Scientist, 26 March 2008 *]

Colin Barras wrote in in New Scientist: “The association of fossil remains with stone tools at the new site is important, says Eudald Carbonell at the Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain, who led the research team. “We have human remains, stone tools and bones with cut marks,” he says. “It’s all very consistent with occupation here 1.1 million years ago.” Carbonell says the fragmentary remains have been tentatively assigned to the species Homo antecessor, also known from 800,000 year-old remains at Gran Dolina in Spain and Ceprano in Italy.

“Our hypothesis is that antecessor is derived from Homo georgicus, found at Dmanisi, Georgia, in 1.8 million year-old deposits,” he says. Chris Stringer, a palaeoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London, UK,, who was not involved with the study, is more cautious. “Even if antecessor is a valid species, we don’t know where it originated,” he says. *\

“The Dmanisi hominins are the earliest found outside Africa, says Bermúdez de Castro. “In my view, after that first demographic spread out of Africa, a rapid expansion to the east and west could happen,” he says. “It is very probable that hominins arrived in the extreme parts of the Eurasian continent by 1.6 million years.” Warm and humid conditions at the time helped speed up the migration, Bermúdez de Castro thinks. “It is important to remember that we are ‘tropical’ primates,” he says. “The Sierra de Atapuerca is 1000 metres above sea level. So we assume the climate was warmer than today when hominins arrived there.” *\

“Because the fossil record is so patchy around one million years ago, the best evidence for hominin activity comes from the stone tools, says Carbonell. “The interesting thing is that, in Africa at this time, the stone tools are ‘Mode 2’,” he says. Mode 2 tools included classic hand-axes that are not found in Mode 1 industries. “In Europe, we only have Mode 1 – at that moment the Africans were more developed than the Europeans.”“ *\

Very Old Hominin Fossils from Iberia (Spain and Portugal)

On a fossilised fragment of an upper jaw and cheekbone found near caves in the Atapuerca Mountains in July 2022, Reuters reported: The surprise find, which could be about 1.4 million years old, could also give vital clues to the evolution of the human face over the millennia, the team from the Atapuerca Foundation said. The scientists said they were still working on identifying the specific kind of human ancestor and determining the bone's age. "We have to continue our research for about at least a year. ... This takes lots of time," José María Bermúdez de Castro, one of the team's coordinators said. "What we can say is that we have found a fossil that's very important and interesting that belongs to one of the first populations that arrived in Europe." [Source: Reuters, July 9, 2022]

In 2017, Archaeology magazine reported: A 400,000-year-old partial skull buried in the Gruta da Aroeira cave in central Portugal is the oldest human fossil ever found in Portugal and the westernmost in Europe dating to the Middle Pleistocene. The deposit in which the cranium was embedded also contains stone tools, faunal remains, and burned bones. Because the skull displays a unique combination of physical characteristics, experts are hoping it can provide important new information about human evolution in Europe and the origins of Neanderthals. [Source: Jason Urbanus Archaeology magazine, July-August 2017]

Hominins in Europe 1.2 Million Years Ago Did Not Use Fire for Cooking

Research by scientists at the University of York and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona revealed that Europe’s earliest humans did not use fire for cooking, but had a balanced diet of meat and plants – all eaten raw. According to the University of York: “Studying dental plaque from a 1.2 million year old hominin (early human species), recovered by the Atapuerca Research Team in 2007 in Sima del Elefante in northern Spain, archaeologists extracted microfossils to find the earliest direct evidence of food eaten by early humans. These microfossils included traces of raw animal tissue, uncooked starch granules indicating consumption of grasses, pollen grains from a species of pine, insect fragments and a possible fragment of a toothpick. [Source: University of York, December 15, 2016]

“All detected fibres were uncharred, and there was also no evidence showing inhalation of microcharcoal – normally a clear indicator of proximity to fire. The timing of the earliest use of fire for cooking is hotly contested, with some researchers arguing habitual use started around 1.8 million years ago while others suggest it was as late as 300,000-400,000 years ago. Possible evidence for fire has been found at some very early sites in Africa. However, the lack of evidence for fire at Sima del Elefante suggests that this knowledge was not carried with the earliest humans when they left Africa. The earliest definitive evidence in Europe for use of fire is 800,000 years ago at the Spanish site of Cueva Negra, and at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel, a short time later. Taken together, this evidence suggests the development of fire technology occurred at some point between 800,000 and 1.2 million years ago, revealing a new timeline for when the earliest humans started to cook food.

“Dr Karen Hardy, lead author and Honorary Research Associate at the University of York and ICREA Research Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, said: “Obtaining evidence for any aspect of hominin life at this extremely early date is very challenging. Here, we have been able to demonstrate that these earliest Europeans understood and exploited their forested environment to obtain a balanced diet 1.2 million years ago, by eating a range of different foods and combining starchy plant food with meat.

“This new timeline has significant implications in helping us to understand this period of human evolution – cooked food provides greater energy, and cooking may be linked to the rapid increases in brain size that occurred from 800,000 years ago onwards. It also correlates well with previous research hypothesising that the timing of cooking is linked to the development of salivary amylase, needed to process cooked starchy food. Starchy food was an essential element in facilitating brain development, and contrary to popular belief about the ‘Paleodiet’, the role of starchy food in the Palaeolithic diet was significant.” Anita Radini, PhD student at the University of York said: “These results are very exciting, as they highlight the potential of dental calculus to store dietary and environmental information from deep in the human evolutionary past. It is also interesting to see that pollen remains are preserved often in better conditions than in the soil of the same age. Overall this is a very positive step in the discipline, in terms of preservation of material in the calculus matrix.”“

Evidence of Fire in Spain, 800,000 Years Ago

Evidence that early humans were tending fires around 800,000 years ago has been found in a cave in southeastern Spain. Archaeology magazine reported: Excavations in Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar have turned up hundreds of stones, stone artifacts, and animal bones, all with signs of having been subjected to fire. Dating of the site was based on evidence of a reversal of Earth’s magnetic field, known to have occurred around 780,000 years ago, in layers just above where the burned objects were found. “This is the oldest evidence of fire being tended for any site outside Africa, where fire is known from at least a million years ago,” says Michael Walker of the University of Murcia. [Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology magazine, November-December 2016]

“The benefits of controlled fire are clear — warmth, light, cooking — but a separate study suggests that modern humans evolved in a way that allowed them to take maximal advantage of it. The researchers found that modern humans have a genetic mutation that may have helped them tolerate intensely smoky conditions in caves. This may have offered an advantage over Neanderthals, who lacked the mutation.

900,000-Year-Old Hand Axes from Spain

900,000-year-old hand ax from Spain

Hominins living in what is now Spain fashioned double-edged stone cutting tools as early as 900,000 years ago, almost twice as long ago as previously thought. Bruce Bower wrote in Science News: “ If confirmed, the new dates support the idea that the manufacture and use of teardrop-shaped stone implements, known as hand axes, spread rapidly from Africa into Europe and Asia beginning roughly 1 million years ago, say geologist Gary Scott and paleontologist Luis Gibert, both of the Berkeley Geochronology Center in California. [Source: Bruce Bower, Science News, September 3, 2009 ~|~]

“Evidence of ancient reversals of Earth's magnetic field in soil at two archaeological sites indicates that hand axes date to 900,000 years ago in one location and to 760,000 years ago in the other, Scott and Gibert report in the Sept. 3 Nature. Until now, most researchers thought that hand axes unearthed at these sites were made between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago. ~|~

“Other European hand ax sites date to no more than 500,000 years ago. In contrast, hand axes date to roughly 1.7 million years ago in eastern Africa. And age estimates of 1.2 million years and 800,000 years for hand axes from two Israeli sites indicate that this tool-making style spread out of Africa long before the origin of Homo sapiens around 200,000 years ago. Excavations in southern China have also yielded 800,000-year-old hand axes (SN: 3/4/00, p. 148). Fossils from ancient human ancestors have not been found with the Israeli and Chinese artifacts.~|~

“Earlier analyses of magnetic reversals in soil at other sites in southern Spain indicate that single-edged stone tools appeared there around 1.3 million years ago, Gibert says (SN: 1/4/97, p. 12). Population movements back and forth between Africa and Europe must have occurred at that time, possibly via vessels across the Strait of Gibraltar, he hypothesizes. "Then at 900,000 years ago, we now have the oldest evidence of hand axes in Europe, which represents a second migration from Africa that brought a new stone-tool culture," Gibert says. ~|~

“Scott and Gibert's "surprisingly old ages" for the Spanish hand axes bring the chronology of ancient Europe's settlement in line with that of Asia, remarks archaeologist Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University in the Netherlands. Europe contains relatively few stone-tool sites from around 1 million years ago, making it difficult to reconstruct the timing of ancient population pulses into the continent, Roebroeks says. ~|~

“Although new estimated ages for soil layers at the Spanish sites appear credible, the suggestion that hand axes there are by far the oldest in Europe "is extremely daring, to put it mildly," comments archaeologist Robin Dennell of the University of Sheffield in England. In his view, the precise depth of the hand axes when they were unearthed several decades ago remains unclear. It's possible that these finds actually came from soil layers that Scott and Gibert place at no more than 600,000 years old, Dennell says. ~|~

“Scott and Gibert first identified the geological position of specific magnetic reversals in sediment at an ancient lakeshore near the Spanish sites. Dates for these reversals have already been established in previous studies. The researchers compared these magnetic shifts to those at the hand ax sites to date the tools. These data provide minimum ages for the Spanish finds. "Older ages are possible but would be odd," Gibert says.” ~|~

Sima de los Huesos (“Pit of Bones”)

The Sima de los Huesos (“Pit of Bones”) site is northern Spain about 100 feet (30 meters) below the surface at the bottom of a 42-foot (13-meter) vertical shaft. This “Pit of Bones” has yielded fossils of at least 28 individuals, the world's largest collection of human fossils dating from the Middle Pleistocene, about 125,000 to 780,000 years ago, along with remains of cave bears and other animals. The oldest fossils of modern humans found yet date back to about 200,000 years ago. Archaeologists suggest the bones may have been washed down it by rain or floods, or that the bones were even intentionally buried there.

Henry McHenry wrote in Encyclopædia Britannica: “More than 1,600 human fossils, including several nearly complete skulls, have been found. The age of this material is at least 300,000 years and may be as old as 600,000 years. Brain sizes are within the range of both Neanderthals (H. neanderthalensis) and modern humans. The skeletons possess several traits unique to Neanderthals, including a projecting midface, long and narrow pubic bones, and thick finger bones. Unlike later Neanderthals, however, they do not fully express the characteristic Neanderthal form. The site also harboured a 430,000-year-old fractured skull, which is the earliest evidence of interpersonal violence in Homo. [Source: Henry McHenry, Encyclopædia Britannica]

Fossils from The Sima de los Huesos Spain, dated to be 400,000 years old, provide earliest genetic evidence of Neanderthals. It is possible or likely that the fossils are from a pre-Neanderthal hominin. Ewen Callaway wrote in Nature: “The remains are known as the Sima hominins because they were found in Sima de los Huesos (Spanish for ‘pit of bones’), a 13-metre-deep shaft in Spain’s Atapuerca mountains. Few ancient sites are as important or intriguing as Sima, which holds the remains of at least 28 individuals, along with those of dozens of cave bears and other animals. The hominins might have plummeted to their death, but some researchers think they were deliberately buried there. [Source: Ewen Callaway, Nature, March 14, 2016]

“The Sima hominin skulls have the beginnings of a prominent brow ridge, as well as other traits typical of Neanderthals. But other features, and uncertainties around their age — some studies put them at 600,000 years old, others closer to 400,000 — convinced many researchers that they might instead belong to an older species known as Homo heidelbergensis. Confusion peaked when Meyer, his colleague Svante Pääbo and their team revealed the mitochondrial connection to the Denisovans. But they hoped that retrieving the skeletons’ nuclear DNA — which represents many more lines of ancestry than does mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited solely from the maternal line — would clear things up.”

Bridget Alex wrote in The Guardian: “ The Sima hominins looked like early members of the Neanderthal lineage based on morphological similarities. This hypothesis fit the timing of the split between Neanderthals and modern humans based on pedigree analysis (765,000-550,000 years ago), but did not work with the phylogenetic estimate (383,000-275,000 years ago). [Source: Bridget Alex, The Guardian, December 22, 2016|=|]

“Where do the Sima hominins belong on our family tree? Were they ancestors of both Neanderthals and modern humans, just Neanderthals, or neither? DNA answered this definitively. The Sima hominins belong to the Neanderthal branch after it split with modern humans. Moreover, the result provides a firm time point in our family tree, suggesting that the pedigree rate works for this period of human evolution.” |=|

430,000-Year-Old Sima Hominins

The first Neanderthals were thought to have appeared in Europe, around 200,000 to 250,000 years ago, but the first hominins with proto-Neanderthal traits appeared as early at 600,000 years ago. Neanderthals were already firmly established in Europe when modern humans left Africa and arrived in Europe about 40,000 years ago. The oldest physical evidence of Neanderthal in the region, in the form of skeletons, tools and decorative adornments, dates to more than 120,000 years ago.

Bridget Alex wrote in The Guardian: “At least one evolutionary split was pinned down in 2016, after ancient DNA was extracted from 430,000 year-old hominin fossils from Sima de los Huesos, Spain. The Sima hominins looked like early members of the Neanderthal lineage based on morphological similarities. This hypothesis fit the timing of the split between Neanderthals and modern humans based on pedigree analysis (765,000-550,000 years ago), but did not work with the phylogenetic estimate (383,000-275,000 years ago). [Source: Bridget Alex, The Guardian, December 22, 2016|=|]

“Neanderthals and modern humans likely diverged between 765,000-550,000 years ago. Other evolutionary splits may soon be clarified as well, thanks to advances brought about by the mutation rate debates. Someday soon, when you see a chimp, you may be able to salute your great, great… great grandparent, with the correct number of “greats.” |=|

430,000-Year-Old Sima Hominin Fossils and Their DNA

20120202-Homo_antecessor_male 2.jpg
Homo Antecessor male
Fossils from The Sima de los Huesos Spain, dated to be 400,000 years old, provide earliest genetic evidence of Neanderthals. It is possible or likely that fossils are from a pre-Neanderthal hominin. Ewen Callaway wrote in Nature: “The remains are known as the Sima hominins because they were found in Sima de los Huesos (Spanish for ‘pit of bones’), a 13-metre-deep shaft in Spain’s Atapuerca mountains. Few ancient sites are as important or intriguing as Sima, which holds the remains of at least 28 individuals, along with those of dozens of cave bears and other animals. The hominins might have plummeted to their death, but some researchers think they were deliberately buried there. [Source: Ewen Callaway, Nature, March 14, 2016 ]

According to the Max Planck Society: “Previous analyses of the hominins from Sima de los Huesos in 2013 showed that their maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA was distantly related to Denisovans, extinct relatives of Neandertals in Asia. This was unexpected since their skeletal remains carry Neandertal-derived features. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have since worked on sequencing nuclear DNA from fossils from the cave, a challenging task as the extremely old DNA is degraded to very short fragments. The results now show that the Sima de los Huesos hominins were indeed early Neandertals. Neandertals may have acquired different mitochondrial genomes later, perhaps as the result of gene flow from Africa. [Source: Max Planck Society, March 15, 2016 |~|]

“Until now it has been unclear how the 28 400,000-year-old individuals found at the Sima de los Huesos ("pit of bones") site in Northern Spain were related to Neandertals and Denisovans who lived until about 40,000 years ago. A previous report based on analyses of mitochondrial DNA from one of the specimens suggested a distant relationship to Denisovans, which is in contrast to other archaeological evidence, including morphological features that the Sima de los Huesos hominins shared with Neandertals.

"Sima de los Huesos is currently the only non-permafrost site that allow us to study DNA sequences from the Middle Pleistocene, the time period preceding 125,000 years ago", says Matthias Meyer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, lead author of an article that was published in Nature today. "The recovery of a small part of the nuclear genome from the Sima de los Huesos hominins is not just the result of our continuous efforts in pushing for more sensitive sample isolation and genome sequencing technologies", Meyer adds. "This work would have been much more difficult without the special care that was taken during excavation." |~|

"We have hoped for many years that advances in molecular analysis techniques would one day aid our investigation of this unique assembly of fossils", explains Juan-Luis Arsuaga of the Complutense University in Madrid, Spain, who has led the excavations at Sima de los Huesos for three decades. "We have thus removed some of the specimens with clean instruments and left them embedded in clay to minimize alterations of the material that might take place after excavation." The nuclear DNA sequences recovered from two specimens secured in this way show that they belong to the Neandertal evolutionary lineage and are more closely related to Neandertals than to Denisovans. This finding indicates that the population divergence between Denisovans and Neandertals had already occurred by 430,000 years ago when the Sima de los Huesos hominins lived.” |~|

Amazing Recovery of the 430,000-Year-Old DNA

Cool, moist conditions within the cave, as well as rapid advancements in genetic sequencing techniques, allowed Paabo’s team to decode much of the mitochondrial genome in fossils taken from the Spanish cave. The sequencing feat was hailed by scientists as an incredible achievment. “This is positively exciting,” said Andrea Manica, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Cambridge in England. “This really pushes back the time horizon of human evolution that we can explore with genetics.”

Ewen Callaway wrote in Nature: “Meyer published the results of what may be the world’s most wasteful genome-sequencing project. In decoding just 0.1 percent of the genome of the oldest DNA ever recovered from an ancient human, he threw out enough raw data to map the modern human genome dozens of times over. But the excess was necessary, because the DNA in the 430,000-year-old bones was degraded and contaminated. “Starting such a thing is already very ambitious, and managing it is even more impressive,” says Ludovic Orlando, an ancient-DNA researcher at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. “We are really reaching the limits of what is possible.” [Source: Ewen Callaway, Nature, March 14, 2016 ]

“Meyer’s team managed to glean nuclear and mitochondrial DNA from five Sima samples, probably representing different individuals. A key factor in their success, says Meyer, was that since 2006, archaeologists had carefully refrigerated teeth and shoulder-blade tissue from the pit to preserve the ancient DNA — awaiting advanced molecular-analysis techniques.

“The team’s latest mitochondrial sequences, meanwhile, again confirm the puzzling link between the Sima hominins and the Denisovans. Meyer suggests that the ancestors of the two groups carried mitochondrial DNA that is reflected in both — but which is not present in later Neanderthals. This elimination could have happened by chance, but Meyer now favours the hypothesis that an as yet unknown species from Africa migrated to Eurasia and bred with Neanderthals, replacing the mitochondrial DNA lineages. (Supporting this idea, stone-tool technologies spread from Africa to Eurasia around half a million years ago, and again 250,000 years ago).

“It is hard to rule out these or other ideas without new data, says Meyer. The full or nearly full genome of a Sima hominin, or genetic data from other early Neanderthals, would be necessary. “It’s fascinating and keeps us all on our toes trying to make sense of it all,” says Chris Stringer, a palaeoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London. Stringer says that the recovery of such old nuclear DNA gives him hope that researchers will be able to analyse ancient DNA that stretches even further back in time. “Instead of just being stuck with trying to resolve the last 100,000 years,” he says, “we can really start to put some dates from DNA further down the human tree.”“

Big Freeze 1.1 Million Year Ago Drove Early Hominins out of Europe

According to the BBC: A big freeze previously unknown to science drove early humans from Europe for 200,000 years, but they adapted and returned, new research shows. Ocean sediments from 1.1 million years ago show temperatures suddenly dropped more than 5C, scientists say. They say our early ancestors couldn't have survived as they didn't have heating or warm clothes. Until now, the consensus had been that humans had existed in Europe continuously for 1.5 million years. [Source: Pallab Ghosh, BBC, August 10, 2023]

Evidence for the big freeze is found in sediments in the seabed off the coast of Lisbon, Portugal. Layers are deposited each year which are a record of sea conditions of that period. They also contain pollen grains which are a record of vegetation on the land. Researchers at the IBS Centre for Climate Physics in Busan, in South Korea, ran computer model simulations using data from the sediments. They found that average winter temperatures plummeted in many areas in Europe well below freezing, even in the otherwise milder Mediterranean.

A drop of this magnitude may not seem too severe by today's standards, where most have access to some heating, warm clothing and food, but that was not the case back then, according to Prof Axel Timmermann, who is director of the group. "Early humans were not yet well adapted to cope with such extreme conditions," he said. "There is no direct evidence that they could even control fire at this time. Therefore, the extremely cold and dry conditions over Europe and the corresponding lack of food, must have greatly challenged human survival."

Prof Chronis Tzedakis of University College London, who led the research, turned to experts in early human settlements to see if the theory that the freeze had pushed them out of Europe was borne out by the fossil and archaeological evidence. Following a thorough review, they found that there were human remains dating back to as recently as 1.1 million years ago in Spain, then a gap until about 900,000 years ago, from which period stone tools and footprints in ancient clays have been found in Happisburgh in Norfolk, England.

The big freeze was over by the time early humans walked in Happisburgh were but it was still cold — cooler than it is in that part of Europe today. According to Prof Nick Ashton of the British Museum, it's thought that those early humans had adapted enough to cope with the colder conditions to be able to come and stay in Europe. "It may have triggered evolutionary changes in humans, such as increased body fat as insulation, or increased hair," he told BBC News. "It may also have led to technological developments such as improved hunting or scavenging skills, and abilities to create more effective clothing and shelters." It may have been these advances that enabled humans to cope with succeeding periods of extreme cold and occupy parts of Europe continuously ever since, according to Prof Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum. "A more resilient species came back into Europe either because they learned how to survive better, or it was a different species that had more sophisticated behaviours that enabled them to adapt."

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, Spanish hand ax from Nature

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP and various books and other publications.

Last updated April 2024