Sima del Elefante ("elephant's pit", also called Trinchera Elefante or "elephant's trench" and abbreviated TE in the literature) 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 an undetermined Homo species, dated using paleomagnetic methods to between 1.1 and 1.3 million years ago.
Stone tools discovered at Sima del Elefante include:
- Mode 3 (designation by JGD Clark, still in use today) in level TE19
- Mode 2 in level TE18
- Oldowan (Mode 1 in Clarke's designation), in levels TE9-14
Hominids at Sima del Elefante
The TE9 level, as it is called, contains pieces of a jawbone--a fragment of mandible and a tooth--which was provisionally assigned the designation of Homo antecessor, in 2008. Other human remains found since that time include a manual phalanx (hand bone) and a small fragment of a femur. Additional artifacts within this layer were 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 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 in Europe discovered so far.
Hominin Mandible at Sima del Elefante
Evidence that Sima del Elefante is one of the very earliest humans outside of Africa is partially supported by morphological comparisons to other early hominins, reported in 2011. A recent study found similarities between the Sima del Elefante teeth and those from Dmanisi and early African Homo. However, other aspects of the mandible are not like African Homo, leading researchers to suggest that speciation might have taken place over the long period of time during which Eurasia was populated. This study also led the researchers to conclude that the hominin at Sima del Elefante would be better named as Homo sp., rather than H. antecessor, as they had originally suggested. See Bermúdez de Castro et al. 2011 for additional information.
The jawbone also shows evidence of extensive wear and minor periodontal disease. There are some abrasions that researchers interpret as evidence that this individual used a toothpick--although that is tool use, I don't suppose it ranks as evidence of modern behavior.
Sima del Elefante Archaeology
Sima del Elefante was discovered within a railway trench in the early 1900s, the same railway trench that revealed the Lower to Middle Paleolithic sites of Gran Dolina, Galeria, and Penal. Excavations at Sima del Elefante were taken up in earnest in the late 1990s, and the site today is considered a key locality to understanding the population of the Sierra de Atapuerca, and indeed the populating of Europe.
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the guide to the Lower Paleolithic, the Guide to European Prehistory, and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Aguirre E, and Carbonell E. 2001. Early human expansions into Eurasia: The Atapuerca evidence. Quaternary International 75(1):11-18.
Bermúdez de Castro JM, Martinón-Torres M, Gómez-Robles A, Prado-Simón L, MartÃn-Francés L, Lapresa M, Olejniczak A, and Carbonell E. 2011. Early Pleistocene human mandible from Sima del Elefante (TE) cave site in Sierra de Atapuerca (Spain): A comparative morphological study. Journal of Human Evolution 61(1):12-25.
Bermúdez de Castro JM, Martinón-Torres M, Robles AG, Prado L, and Carbonell E. 2010. New human evidence of the Early Pleistocene settlement of Europe, from Sima del Elefante site (Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain). Quaternary International 223-224:431-433.
Carbonell E, Bermúdez de Castro JM, Parés JM, Pérez-González A, Cuenca-Bescós G, Ollé A, Mosquera M, Huguet R, van der Made J, Rosas A et al. 2008. The first hominin of Europe. Nature 452:465-470.
Martinón-Torres M, MartÃn-Francés L, Gracia A, Olejniczak A, Prado-Simón L, Gómez-Robles A, Lapresa M, Carbonell E, Arsuaga JL, and Bermúdez de Castro JM. 2011. Early Pleistocene human mandible from Sima del Elefante (TE) cave site in Sierra de Atapuerca (Spain): A palaeopathological study. Journal of Human Evolution 61(1):1-11.
Parés JM, Pérez-González A, Rosas A, Benito A, Bermúdez de Castro JM, Carbonell E, and Huguet R. 2006. Matuyama-age lithic tools from the Sima del Elefante site, Atapuerca (northern Spain). Journal of Human Evolution 50(2):163-169.
No comments:
Post a Comment