Michael Coy
THE ‘Sima del Elefante’ (‘Chasm of the Elephant’) is a chain of underground caves in a limestone outcrop near Atapuerca, a village a few miles outside Burgos.
The cave system has long been known to possess prehistoric human fragments and is currently being excavated by a team from the University of Burgos. The dig has certainly paid dividends: the face part of a very ancient man has been uncovered, adding to our understanding of human origins.
A piece from an adult man’s left cheek and upper jaw has come to light, dating back 1.4 million years, belonging to a member of a human species that has since gone extinct. Today, the region is somewhat dry and desolate, but back then it was wooded, fertile, and criss-crossed by streams. Wildlife (in other words, food) would have been plentiful in the early Pleistocene age, when what is now Spain was inhabited by at least two types of human.
‘This research introduces a new actor in the story of human evolution in Europe,’ said Dr Rosa Huguet of the University of Rovira i Virgili in southern Catalonia, who helped uncover the fossils at the Sima del Elefante cave. We know that early humans reached Eurasia from Africa at least 1.8 million years ago, as evidenced by five skulls dating from the period in Dmanisi, Georgia. The skulls are attributed to Homo Erectus, the first early human species to have left the African continent.
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Before this recent find, the earliest human remnants in western Europe were 1.2 million-year-old pieces of jawbone and teeth, also from Sima del Elefante. Younger human remains, dating to 800,000 years ago, were unearthed at the nearby Gran Dolina (‘Giant Sinkhole’) cavern. Particular features of the latter led researchers to consider them a distinct species, namely Homo Antecessor, or pioneer man.
Writing in the scientific journal Nature, the Spanish archaeologists say the latest remains are more primitive than Homo Antecessor but resemble Homo Erectus. Because the exact provenance of the fragments is hard to slot into our current ‘map’ of human ancestry, the team has designated the species Homo Affinis Erectus, suggesting that it may be a distinct genetic branch, but related to Homo Erectus.
Workers onsite don’t bother with the academic Latin names. They have christened the bone fragment ‘Pink’, after Pink Floyd. The rock group’s 1973 album *The Dark Side of the Moon*, in Spanish translation, offers the nickname ‘hidden face’, which seemed appropriate to the team.
Dr María Martinón-Torres, the director of the National Centre for Research on Human Evolution in Burgos, has said that among its distinctive characteristics, ‘Pink’ had a flatter nasal structure than Homo Antecessor, which shares the more modern-looking face and prominent nasal bones of Homo Sapiens.
Chris Stringer, a research leader on human evolution at the Natural History Museum in London, says the fossil is ‘a very important find’. In 2023, Stringer and others identified a period of extreme cooling about 1.1 million years ago that may have driven early humans out of western Europe, possibly explaining the different population found at Sima del Elefante.
Excavations at the Atapuerca site paint a picture of lush meadows and woodlands more than 1.1 million years ago, with oaks, pines, juniper, and hazel trees in abundance. Rivers cutting through the landscape drew water voles and mice, hippos, bison, and deer. Quartz and flint tools have also been recovered alongside animal bones bearing cut marks from butchering.
More insight into the Sima del Elefante lifestyle is apparent from a groove that runs across the partial crown of a tooth in the ‘Pink’ fossil, believed to be a wear-and-tear mark from using a rudimentary toothpick.
‘This is another step towards understanding the first Europeans,’ said Dr José María Bermúdez de Castro, the co-director of the Atapuerca Project. ‘We now know that this first species had an appearance reminiscent of the specimens included by many in Homo Erectus. However, the remains from the Sima del Elefante site have a very particular combination of features. More fossils should be found in other contemporary sites to reach a more robust conclusion about the identity of this species.’
