Science, Space and Technology News 2024
A study in Spain’s Orce region suggests it hosts the oldest human remains in Europe, dating back 1.3 million years. This supports the hypothesis that early humans migrated to Europe via the Strait of Gibraltar. The findings, based on paleomagnetism and faunal comparisons, challenge the traditional view of an Asian migration route.
The study, led by Lluís Gibert, researcher and lecturer at the University of Barcelona’s Faculty of Earth Sciences, was conducted in collaboration with researchers from the Berkeley Geochronology Centre and Murray State University.The new dating has been based on the analysis of the paleomagnetism of an area of the Orce region, which has never been sampled before and which has been protected from the erosion that this basin has suffered over the years.
The researchers have been able to identify a magnetic polarity sequence “with five magnetic events that allow them to place the three Orce sites with human presence between the Olduvai and Jaramillo subchron, that is, between 1.77 and 1.07 million years ago ,” explains Gibert. They subsequently applied a statistical age model to accurately refine the chronology of the different stratigraphic levels with a margin of error of only 70,000 years.
In this sense, the paper presents a detailed analysis of the micromammals and large mammals from all the Orce sites, carried out by the expert Robert Martin, based on the palaeontological collections stored at the Museum of the Catalan Institute of Palaeontology Miguel Crusafont in Sabadell.
Gibert added, “We also defend the hypothesis that they arrived from Gibraltar because no older evidence has been found at any other site along the alternative route.”Similarity to Hominids From the Island of Flores He explains that, in this sense, the Gibraltar route currently requires crossing up to fourteen kilometers of sea route, but “perhaps in the past this distance was shorter at certain times due to the high tectonic activity in this region and the fluctuations in sea level that favored migrations.”
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