ARCH 131 Lecture Notes - Atapuerca Mountains, Homo Heidelbergensis, Neandertal (Valley)

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Archaeology
• Course: ARCH 131
• Professor: Dennis Sandgathe

Document Summary

Some form of h. erectus arrives by 1,400,000 bp. And eventually modern humans arrive 40,000 bp: gran dolina & sima del elefante, atapuerca, spain, orce, spain. Venta micena (1. 6 mya: cranial fragments, but open to question whether bones are hominin or not, no stone tools. Barranco leon (1. 4 mya: no hominin remains but stone tools, dated by various methods. A rail line was cut through the hill in the late 1800s: gran dolina. 2002 formal excavations at gran dolina, atapuerca. Layer 6: radiometric (absolute) dates and paleomagnetism suggest these remains are 800-875,000 years old. But stone tools from older layer approx. Sediments settle on ground- iron-based particles align with current magnetic pole. When sediments become compacted their orientation becomes locked in: sima del elefante. Layer 9 is 10 levels below(older than) the. Small mammals from level 9 are species well dated to between 1-1. 5 mya. Optical stimulation date for level 9 is 1. 22 +/- 0. 16.