Sima del Elefant: Oldest Human Remains in Western Europe

The Sima del Elefante site is a karst rockshelter located in the Sierra de Atapuerca mountain range of northern Spain. The cave measures 18 meters deep and up to 15 meters wide, and it contains sixteen stratigraphic levels, the oldest of which represents hominin fossils of Homo antecessor, dated using paleomagnetic methods to between 1.1 and 1.2 million years ago.

The TE9 level, as it is called, contains pieces of a jawbone--a fragment of mandible and a tooth. Additional artifacts within this layer are stone flakes, produced by direct hard-hammer percussion on hand-held, medium-sized cores. Animal bones present in the layer include typical species for the time period, including mustelids, murids, rodents, and insectivores. Bones of an ancient bovid show percussion marks and defleshing cut marks, attesting to butchering.

If the dating holds up, Sima del Elefante is still younger than the latest dates from the Dmanisi in Georgia (between 1.1 to 1.8 mya, again assuming Dmanisi is correct), but clearly the site is among the oldest hominid sites discovered so far, and according to the researchers, the oldest in western Europe.

Sources

Carbonell, Eudald, et al. 2008 The first hominin of Europe. Nature 452:465-470.