Atapuerca rewrites Humanity – La Rioja

Full of questions and answers, in a tunnel that runs through the history of humanity since the Neolithic period 5,000 years ago to 1.3 million with the earliest known hominids, Trench Railway opened a year before the group Visitors to the Museum of Natural Sciences in Arnedo, in the footsteps of the place that the first Europeans set foot. With the lengthy time, the strong links between the museum and its director arnedano, Santiago Jimenez, with his research from the beginning of the excavation hand Emiliano Aguirre team in 1978, returned to present your guests a trip to destination unknown .

In an edition of the excavations in which he celebrated the twentieth birthday of the discovery of Homo antecessor, the oldest in Europe 800,000 years old hominid Atapuerca invitation launches campaign to rebuild and reflection evolutionary tree of humanity-in 2007, the Sima del Elefante and traveled 1.3 million years. The study of DNA from fossils found in the pit of bones guide the steps to define a different species yet to be determined and to what eight Atapuerca have much of the word.

What’s

the evolutionary path we Sapiens, Neanderthals and preceded us Atapuerca defined to Antecessor. These last two, different areas of the planet cite various species. The Burgos want to define the common reservoir. “We are experiencing a revolution, possibly involving similar paradigm shift that produced the appearance of Antecessor-LA Rioja Journal describes one of the three co-directors, José María Bermúdez de Castro. It can not be that 7,000 fossils found in the Sima de los Huesos relating to a jaw that nobody knows where it came from. We have to fight to get our colleagues accept what is inevitable. ”

Carbonell: “There is a paradigm shift that affects the theory of evolutionary processes”

information accumulated during 36 years of excavation, the presence of 17 skulls, Atapuerca has defined its proposal to take to Congress International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences will host Burgos 1 to 7 September. After the co-director Juan Luis Arsuaga the present in France, raising the removal heidelbergensis, the proposal will also Atapuerca in March at a conference in the United States. “With hundreds of remains of antecessor, there is a paradigm shift that affects the theory of evolutionary processes: we have the conceptual elements and records to be written a page in history important” values ​​Eudald Carbonell, the third co-directors, describing the September Congress as the “icing on the process’ and it will open a new cycle for Atapuerca.

A school of life

The landmark of Congress campaign has reduced the excavation to 25 days, less than twenty years ago. From 1 to 25 July, will complete 32,720 hours of work. During their visit, the group praised the Museum arnedano meticulous work, each focusing on its grid, the team of 150 people next twenty to thirty directors of different disciplines, from archeology to zooarchaeology. “It is a prime location for science, for our evolution, but mostly it is a training in human capital, a school of life”, they praised Santiago Jimenez.