Located at Fuente Nueva-3, this Early Pleistocene archaeological site hosts some of the oldest traces of human habitation in Western Europe.
Researchers at the University of Malaga have revealed, in an unprecedented manner, that the Early Pleistocene archaeological site of Orce, often referred to as the ‘elephant graveyard’ due to the abundance of remains from the extinct elephant species Mammuthus meridionalis, actually concealed a natural trap in the form of quicksand.
The site of Fuente Nueva 3 (FN3), located in the northeastern margin of the Guadix-Baza Depression (Granada), is one of the deposits of Orce that contains some of the earliest evidence of human presence in Western Europe – consisting of lithic assemblages, that is, stones carved by our ancestors – that is dated to one million four hundred thousand years ago.
Likewise, this archaeological site preserves manuports – unmodified stones used as percussion tools to fracture bones and access the marrow and, perhaps, also used as throwing weapons to scare away hyenas – and abundant fossils of large mammals, some of which preserve anthropogenic marks related to skinning, butchering, and marrow processing. And also bones with tooth marks caused by scavenging carnivores.
The results of this pioneering research have recently been published in the Iberian Journal of Geology.
Two archaeological Levels
According to this study, co-led by Full Professor of Paleontology at the UMA Paul Palmqvist and Professor of Stratigraphy and Paleontology at the UMA María Patrocinio Espigares, the fertile layers of this site have two different archaeological levels: lower (LAL) and upper (UAL). Both levels preserve abundant skeletal remains and lithic tools. However, while the first one shows a high density of manuports, which suggests that hominin activity was more intense at this level, the second one preserves many remains of megaherbivores, particularly, the extinct elephants Mammuthus meridionalis, which points to a greater involvement of the giant hyenas.
Thus, these scientists have analyzed the statistical differences in the composition of the faunal assemblages preserved in these two levels and the sedimentology, specifically the particle size in the fertile layers of both levels. The latter is a key aspect in the research, as it shows a predominance of silts and clays in layers 2-3 of the lower level, and fine and very fine sands in layer 5 of the upper level.
“These fine sand sediments, deposited close to the paleolake that was in the region, would also contain slightly saline water, a mixture that explains that they could have worked as quicksand, where larger animals were trapped,” said the UMA scientists.
Food for Scavengers
Therefore, experts point out that the latter level may be interpreted as a natural quicksand trap in which megaherbivores were trapped due to the elevated weight of their limbs, and their half-sunken carcasses attracted the scavengers, both hyenas and humans, which fed on these and left their lithic assemblages and coprolites –fossilized excrement of hyenas– as evidence of their presence.
The new finding discovered by UMA researchers represents a “very important milestone to gain more knowledge about the subsistence strategies of our ancestors, the first Europeans, and their competition with the large carrion hyenas for access to these meat resources, since it is the first time a natural trap with these characteristics has been described in a fossil deposit of special interest to human evolution.”
Carrying out more detailed studies differentiating the upper and lower archaeological levels, as well as characterizing other important sites in the Orce region, such as Barranco León, which also contributes evidence of human presence, are the next steps planned by this scientific team of the UMA, in which researchers from the Complutense University of Madrid and Tarragona also participate.
More Than a Decade of UMA Research in Orce
The University of Malaga has been researching the site of Fuente Nueva 3 for several decades. The first publication of the UMA that highlighted the significance of this place, in 2013, described a partial elephant skeleton surrounded in part by flint flakes and coprolites, attesting to the competition between these two super-scavengers for the carcass resources.
Reference: “The late Early Pleistocene site of Fuente Nueva-3 (Guadix-Baza Depression, SE Spain): a hyena latrine developed on a quicksand trap for megaherbivores?” by Paul Palmqvist, Isidoro Campaña, Alejandro Granados, Bienvenido Martínez-Navarro, Alejandro Pérez-Ramos, Guillermo Rodríguez-Gómez, Antonio Guerra-Merchán, Sergio Ros-Montoya, María Dolores Rodríguez-Ruiz, José Manuel García-Aguilar, Víctor Hernández and M. Patrocinio Espigares, 26 May 2024, Journal of Iberian Geology.
DOI: 10.1007/s41513-024-00241-1
9 Comments
God told me the African race is 1.5 million years old. Real human beings. Not Neanderthalensis. The only humans in existence before the flood was the Black race. The Caucasian and Asian races did not descend from the Black people. No humanans descend from the Neanderthalensis. God created the Caucasian and Asian races several hundred years after the Tower of Babel incident mentioned in the Bible. God said he put the DNA of the Neanderthalensis into the genome of Caucasians and Asians when he created them to make new people. God said he created the Caucasian and Asian races in the Pacific when he was still replenishing the Earth.The African race is hundreds of thousands of years older than the Caucasian and Asian races. They African race is the only race that descends from Adam and Eve and their son Seth, Noah and his wife and their three sons Shem, Ham and Japheth and their three wives. God said animal and human DNA is not compatible. God is the only one who could make animal DNA work in the human genome. The Neanderthalensis were prehistoric apes.
Why are you, a god fearing…person thing.
God and science aren’t a match. They oppose one another. Take your god believing mental illness back to your house hold and focus on indoctrinating your own kids. Leave us out of it.
No offense, even though I’m sure it’s offensive. It’s more offensive when your kind (haters of earth and believers of the make believe) come on here and try to spread your mental illness. Your kind made me anti theist and I sure as heck don’t need you over here trying to corrupt our science articles with your fake psychopath god.
Answer me this…did you hit the age of 18-25 then choose your god or did your parents force you into the one they were born into based on their location on the planet?
Due to some glitches in technology I have some misspelled words in my comment.
Why didn’t God tell you that you had spelling errors? That blows your whole premise and theory.
We all have some Neanderthal DNA in us as we both descend from a common ancestor
Neanderthals were humans and in essence they are still here within us, their genetic pool was just overwhelmed by a much larger gene pool commonly called human, but only for the sake of symantics, example; we could call a roll of dice a game of chance or we can it a derivative of a probability density wave packet, that’s the only reason why there exists confusion as to what is or was humans; which no doubt, but that you’ll all be extinct soon enough if don’t start acting as though you really were human; if that ever really was a thing.
Must’ve been one hell of a party.
Let’s forget about science, facts and research and rely on what God tells you instead.
Neanderthals were humans and in essence they are still here within us, their genetic pool was just overwhelmed by a much larger gene pool commonly called human, but only for the sake of symantics, example; we could call a roll of dice a game of chance or we can it a derivative of a probability density wave packet, that’s the only reason why there exists confusion as to what is or was humans; which no doubt, but that you’ll all be extinct soon enough if don’t start acting as though you really were human; if that ever really was a thing.