Human occupation of Iberia prior to the Jaramillo magnetochron (>1.07 Myr)

Abstract

The first migration out of Africa undertaken by the genus Homo is documented in Georgia at 1.8 Myr (Dmanisi) and some 0.4 Myr afterwards in the Middle East (’Ubeidiya). However, the debate on when the European continent was populated for the first time remains open. The first human presence in Europe prior to the Jaramillo subchron (1.07–0.99 Myr) is evidenced at Fuente Nueva 3 and Barranco León D (Orce) and at Sima del Elefante (Atapuerca), an occupation that seems to have continued through the Jaramillo at Gran Dolina TD3–4 and TD5 (Atapuerca), at Vallparadís (Barcelona), and up to the Matuyama–Brunhes boundary at Gran Dolina TD6. Even so, those who still defend a ‘short chronology’ espouse an intermittent early population limited to the Mediterranean area, delaying the first occupation until after the Jaramillo. These hypotheses fail to explain what factors were behind the absence of population in Europe prior to this period, bearing in mind that there were populations of hominins at the gates of Europe between 1 and 0.5 Myr before the first archaeological record documented in Western Europe. Paleomagnetic analyses of the archaeological sites are rarely able to detect the Jaramillo subchron due to its short duration, while the radiometric dating methods (U-series/ESR) usually applied are limited in the accuracy they can achieve for the chronologies in question. These limitations make it necessary to depend on the biostratigraphy of small and large mammals to ascertain with precision the time of the first colonization of the continent. Accordingly, in the present article we discuss the chronological data from the older Iberian archaeological sites using biostratigraphic data to establish an archaeological sequence that demonstrates the expansion of the first hominin occupation of Southern Europe prior to Jaramillo.