Portal de Caravaca de la Cruz
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In the deposit, with an antiquity close to million years, is the fire made by the oldest man of Europe
The Caravaqueño deposit of the Black Cave, located in the Narrow Historic Site of La Encarnación, continues to provide important data and findings on the behavior of the earliest hominids.
This has been assured today by Professor Michael J. Walker, who, accompanied by the Councilor for Culture, Óscar Martínez, has made a balance of the XXVIII excavation campaign, held in the framework of the Field School of Prehistory and Paleonthropology of the Quaternary of The Region of Murcia.
The head of the area of ​​Culture in the Consistory Caravaqueño has highlighted the importance of the Black Cave as a key site for the knowledge of human evolution and has praised the work developed by the Association Murcian for the Study of Paleoanthropology and Quaternary Mupantquat) -which maintains a collaboration agreement with the City Council of Caravaca- for its study, valorization and international scientific diffusion.
He has also requested the collaboration of other institutions and administrations so that this deposit, which has been visited by more than fifty people in its open day, is increasingly known in the field of paleoanthropology.
The team of the association Mupantquat and the University of Murcia moved to the cave, along with volunteers from universities in the United States, Australia, United Kingdom and Portugal, has continued with the investigation of evidence of use of fire by ancient man, First detected in 2011, being the oldest of those found in European paleolithic deposits.
In the campaign of 2017 important fauna and flint remains have been found affected by the combustion, as well as numerous remains of extinct fauna, like a great fragment of humeral trochlea of ​​a bison and a great piece of a rhinoceros.
"Among the remains that appeared this year, we can highlight a varied lithic industry, which shows a treatment and processing of the material very striking and advanced for the time so old in which the coat was frequented. Also, the different types of raw material indicate a deep Knowledge of the landscape surrounding the cave, "excavation director Michael J Walker has reported.
As far as the fauna remains, numerous remains of micromamíferos appear and also remains of great mammals from which conclusions can be drawn on the ways of life and subsistence of the human being of so remote time.
Finally, as Professor Walker has pointed out, the systematic excavation of the Black Cave in the Quípar River Strait continues to provide a wealth of information on the behavior of early hominids: "We continue, with great impetus and enthusiasm, to investigate to understand and to be able to To respond to the many unknowns that the origin of the human being poses, and for that we surpassed campaign to campaign, advancing next to the archaeological methodology of investigation of the Palaeolithic ".
The site of the Black Cave of the Quípar River Strait is between 900,000 and 800,000 years old, which corresponds to the end of the Early (or Lower) Pleistocene.
The cave was frequented by humans who left traces of their presence in the form of remains of the fire and a hand ax, both being the oldest in Europe, in addition to other minor paleolithic tools and abundant remains of fauna.
Ancient humans probably belonged to the extinct species of the "Heidelberg Man" or Homo heidelbergensis that inhabited Europe between 900,000 and 150,000 years ago in the Pleistocene and was ancestral species of the "Neanderthal Man" or Homo neanderthalensis that lived between 150,000 and 40,000 Years in Europe.
Source: Ayuntamiento de Caravaca de la Cruz
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