Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
A team of scientists found in the Spanish municipality of Atapuerca, in the province of Burgos, the fragment of the oldest human face found in Western Europe, as recorded this Wednesday in a study published in the journal Nature.
"There are many questions to be answered, and this finding helps to write a new page in the history of human evolution," said the paleoanthropologist and lead author of the study, José María Bermúdez de Castro Risueño, quoted by international media.
Named Pink, in honor of the band Pink Floyd, this piece is between 1.1 and 1.4 million years old, so it surpasses the record of Homo antecessor, which is considered to have populated Western Europe about 850 billion years ago.
The Homo ancestor has a half-face third similar to that of modern Homo sapiens. On the other hand, the half-face third found in the site of the Sima of the Elephant combines traits common to the Homo erectus with other derivatives, absent in it, Bermudez said.
For this reason, they called it Homo affinis erectus and there lies the main characteristic of the event, the specialists consider that it can now be thought that in western Europe there were at least two human species, Homo antecessor and the new Homo affinis erectus, at a very early time.
The facial bones were discovered in 2022 and have since been in search of Spain to confirm their theory. With a work that included 3D digital reconstruction, they found the remains that rewrite the history of humanity.
"We left the site that morning June 30, 2022 thinking that, with a 95 percent probability, we had found a human rest," archaeologist Rosa Huguet, a researcher who leads the study, told the newspaper El Mundo. Then human evolution experts examined it. "They confirmed to us that we had a human fossil, a fragment of face from the left side," he added.
The oldest human face in Europe was located in Dmanisi, Georgia, at the beginning of the century. It is presumed to be between 1.6 and 1.8 million years old and is attributed to Homo erectus. (Text and photo: RT)
