Portal de Caravaca de la Cruz
www.portaldecaravaca.com
A team of 15 experts participates in the XIX Paleoanthropological and Archaeological Excavation Campaign of the Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar, in the La Encarnación caravaqueña district.
The site is between 900,000 and 800,000 years old and in recent years has established itself as an international reference for the study of the behavior of the first hominids.
This year, the open day will take place on Sunday, July 15, at 10.00 am, with the meeting point "La Ermitica" (next to the river).
The excavation will take place during a large part of the month of July and a summer, plus the efforts will be focused on expanding the research at the levels where the presence of fire by the oldest man in Europe is found.
In this sense, a scientific article has recently been published in the prestigious journal 'Biology History', which confirms the site's surprising antiquity.
The excavation campaign is directed by the Murcian Association for the Study of Paleoanthropology and the Quaternary (Mupantquat), with the collaboration of the University of Murcia and the City of Caravaca de la Cruz, institutions with which they have a collaboration agreement.
The research team heads the professor emeritus of the Faculty of Biology Michael-John Walker;
next to the archaeologist of Mupantquat, Mariano Vicente López, and the professor of the University of Murcia María Haber Uriarte.
To the ten experts of Mupantquat and the UMU, this year there are five volunteers from universities in the United States and Portugal.
The excavations carried out in the last two decades have provided valuable information about the first hominids: "We continue, with great impetus and enthusiasm, researching to understand and be able to respond to the many uncertainties posed by the origin of the human being, and for this we overcome campaign to campaign, moving forward with the archaeological methodology of Paleolithic research, "said Professor Walker.
The deposit corresponds to the end of the Ancient Pleistocene (or Lower).
The cave was frequented by human beings who left traces of their presence in the form of remains of fire and a hand ax, both being the oldest in Europe.
In addition, in the successive campaigns, numerous minor paleolithic tools and abundant remains of fauna have been located, belonging in many cases to micro mammals and large mammals, from which conclusions can be drawn about the ways of life and subsistence of man in Prehistory. .
The human beings that inhabited the cave probably belonged to the extinct species of the "Man of Heidelburg" or "Homo heidelbergensis", which inhabited Europe between 900,000 and 150,000 years ago, in the Pleistocene, and was ancestral species of the "Neanderthal Man" u 'Homo neanderthalensis'.
Source: Ayuntamiento de Caravaca de la Cruz
Privacy policy
- Legal notice
- Cookies