News Desk : dhakamirror.com
The oldest human fossils ever discovered on the European continent are 1.4-million-year-old facial bones, which could change the course of human prehistory, according to the researchers involved in the historic discovery.
Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Aurora Martin, the archaeologist and general coordinator of the Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos, said: “We do not yet know to which first human species the fragments found belonged”.
The bones, found at the end of June at the caves of the Sierra de Atapuerca excavation site near Burgos, constitute “a breakthrough that will help rewrite the history of human evolution,” she added.
“Until 1994, it was known that there were no ancient human species in Europe until 500,000 years ago. Now we’re talking about 1.4 million years ago. In other words, we pushed back the evolution of humans in Europe 1 million years,” she explained.
“The new invention, which is the facial parts of a species, unearthed in the summer of 2022, belongs to 1.4 million years ago. This opens new doors for us and makes us ask a lot of new questions. We will try to find answers to these, but they will all be after research. We can’t give an answer right now,” added the archaeologist.
The Atapuerca site was discovered towards the end of the 19th century while railroad construction was taking place, and the first excavations started in 1976.
In this area, in 2007, archaeologists discovered the 1.2 million-year-old human fossils that had previously never been discovered on the European continent.
The Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos has ancient Stone Age human and animal fossils on display that were discovered at Atapuerca, a World Heritage Site.
