Spain’s Acheulean Technology

Cultures, technologies and species follow similar evolutionary tracks. Each creates many variants at its center. Every individual moving toward the periphery takes one version. Thus, the center can be identified by its greater diversity, which also tends to reinforce it ability to innovate. The outer edges lag behind, until some event stimulates them into becoming centers of creativity.

1.6 million years ago, even before hominins in Spain were adapting Oldowan technology to Iberian rocks, others in the East African Rift Valley were making Acheulean tools: the oval bi-faced axes, picks, and cleavers commonly associated with the old stone age.

Sediments at Konso, in southwestern Ethiopia, indicate the area was then a drying lake bed. The mammals that migrated there included grass-eating cloven-hoofed bovids like antelope, and a number of pig-like animals. These replaced endemic species that had lived there when the area was wetter.

Like the Oldowan, Acheulean tool makers used locally available basalt. Yonas Beyene’s team believed picks originated when Homo erectus was emerging. They speculated the heavy tools were used to handle wood or to dig.

Once perfected, pick manufacturing did not change. Hand axes, however, began as thick blades about 1.6 million years ago. With practice, the shapes became more symmetrical and the edges near the tip were thinned. In another 400,000 years, the shapes were developing "three-dimensional symmetry." The team thinks the changes in spatial judgement reflected increased cognitive abilities honed by changing requirements for butchering skills.

The centrifugal movement of ideas and species from a core area may occur when groups move into empty areas. If, instead, they meet other groups, the expansion of a technology may occur when one displaces the other, when one trades with the other, or when the two interbreed.

Acheulean technology reached Europe by 500,000 years ago, during the warmer period following the Günz Glacier, and was in the Atapuerca area 100,000 years later, just before the advance of the Mindel glacier. The limestone formation was now riddled with caves. The Gran Dolina and Galería are part of the northern Trinchera del Ferrocarri, the Sima del Elefante part of the southern Cueva Mayor. Sima de los Huesos is connected to the last.

Hand axes and cleavers found at Galería were made from quartzite from local river terraces. Most were small and showed signs of having been used to cut animal tissue. Ones with more abrupt edges were used to scrape hides. A few showed signs of use on wood.

A single lower jaw bone found there has been associated with Homo heidelbergensis. Although the stone workers knew the area well, the cave was not used to make tools. Eudald Carbonell and Paula García-Medrano thought they entered the caves when they believed an animal had become trapped. They dismembered it, and took the pieces elsewhere to eat.

Among the animal bones found in the cave were those of giant, fallow and red deer, and large goats. There were also some rhinoceros, bison, and horse remains. The most common predators, who came after the hominins left, were red foxes, wildcats, and hyenas.

Less than a mile and a half away, Sima de los Huesos was a more treacherous trap. An opening near the top dropped some 43' to the floor. Archaeologists found remains of more than 150 Deninger’s bears, some in every layer. They even found bears’ nests and claw marks where they tried to escape. Ursus deningeri is believed to be the ancestor of cave bears.

Underneath the bears, they found remains of 28 Homo heidelbergensis. There were nine adolescents, nine young adults, five mature adults, and four over thirty divided between eight males and eleven females. All the skeletal parts survived, even ear bones.

Carbonell and Juan Luis Arsuaga both think it was a deliberate burial of corpses because the bones for individuals weren’t widely scattered. The most important piece of evidence was a hand axe made from a particularly attractive piece of quartzite. It’s the only tool in the cave. Aging has made it impossible to know if it was ever used, or was completely symbolic.

Carbonell noted studies of the mid-ear bone suggested these hominins had developed the physical capacity for language. Recently, Svante Pääbo’s team tested the mitochondrial DNA from one femur, expecting to find connections between it and the Neanderthals that followed. Instead, the group found evidence of Denisova hominins, a species found later in the Altai mountains of Siberia.

Speciation within the Homo genus has turned out to be more complex than expected for isolated populations living on frontiers where the males must have mated outside the group. Mitochondrial DNA is inherited from the female side.

Notes: Research teams rotate credit for articles between members. I’ve grouped them by the director or lead member; the articles often are found under the name of the second person listed.

Arsuaga, J. L., et alia. "Sima de los Huesos (Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain). The Site," Journal of Human Evolution 33:109-127:1997.

Beyene, Yonas, et alia. "The Characteristics and Chronology of the Earliest Acheulean at Konso, Ethiopia," National Academy of Science, Proceedings 110:1584-1591:2013.

_____, Shinji Nagaoka, et alia. "Lithostratigraphy and Sedimentary Environments of the Hominid-Bearing Pliocene-Pleistocene Konso Formation in the Southern Main Ethiopian Rift, Ethiopia," Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 216:333-357:2005.

_____, Gen Suwa, et alia. "Plio-pleistocene Terrestrial Mammal Assemblage from Konso, Southern Ethiopia," Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 23:901-916:2003. The animals included:

Antelope - Damaliscus niro
Pig - Metridiochoerus compactus, Metridiochoerus hopwoodi, Metridiochoerus modestus and Kolpochoerus limnetes/olduvaiensis

Carbonell, Eudald, Paula García-Medrano, et alia. "The Earliest Acheulean Technology at Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain): Oldest Levels of the Galería Site (Gii Unit)," Quaternary International 353:170-194:2014. Animals included:

Giant deer - Megaloceros solilhacus sspp
Fallow deer - Dama dama clactoniana
Red deer - Cervus elaphus priscus
Goat - Hemitragus bonali
Bison - Bison sp. (small),
Rhinoceros - Stephanorhinus cf. hemitoechus
Horse - Equus ferus, Equus cf. hydruntinus

Carnivores
Red fox - Vulpes vulpes
Wildcat - Felis sylvestris

_____ and Marina Mosquera. The Emergence of a Symbolic Behaviour: the Sepulchral Pit of Sima De Los Huesos, Sierra De Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain," Comptes Rendus Palevol 5:155-160:2006.

Pääbo, Svante, Matthias Meyer, et alia. "A Mitochondrial Genome Sequence of a Hominin from Sima De Los Huesos," Nature 505:403-406:2014.

Graphics:
1. NordNordWest. "Location Map of Konso, Ethiopia," uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, 11 September 2009.

2. Benito, José-Manuel. " Plan of La Trinchera del Ferrocarril, in the Archaeological Site of Atapuerca (Spain)," uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, October 2002.