Homo antecessor and the earliest western Europeans at Atapuerca

Date

c. 850,000–800,000 years ago

Category

Social & demographic

Region

Western Europe (Spain)

Era

Prehistory

Significance

At the Gran Dolina cave in the Sierra de Atapuerca near Burgos, Spain, level TD6 yielded fossils of a previously unknown human species named Homo antecessor in 1997, dated to roughly 850,000–800,000 years ago.

These are among the oldest securely dated human remains in western Europe and show a striking mix of primitive and surprisingly modern facial traits; some researchers regard antecessor as close to the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans, though its exact place on the family tree is debated. The bones bear unmistakable cut marks, deliberate breakage for marrow, and butchery patterns identical to those on the animal bones found with them — the earliest well-documented evidence of human cannibalism. Analyses suggest this was not a response to starvation, since food was plentiful, but a recurring social practice, possibly directed at members of rival groups. Atapuerca thus records both the deep antiquity of the human presence in Europe and the disturbing complexity of early human behaviour.

Related social & demographic events

• Anatomically modern Homo sapiens appears in Africa
  c. 300,000 years ago
• Rise of the Yamnaya Culture and Steppe Pastoralism
  c. 3300 BCE
• The Natufian culture and the first sedentary hunter-gatherers
  c. 15,000 – 11,500 years ago (c. 13,000–9500 BCE)
• Uruk becomes the world's first city
  c. 4000–3100 BCE
• Arrival of farming in Britain and Ireland and the rise of megaliths
  c. 4000 BCE
• Çatalhöyük and the great Neolithic towns of Anatolia
  c. 7100 – 5950 BCE

Further reading

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

The wider story

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari

Global best-seller on how our species, its populations and societies remade the world.

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