Saturday, July 20: Atapuerca part 1

I had been thinking about this question/problem for a while. What is the trade off between walking far each day and/or taking time to see some of the historical sights along the way? Just outside Atapuerca is an archeological dig site. It is famous for the discovery of the oldest pre-human ancestors found in Europe.  This is the kind of thing I think is cool, pre-history, evolution... And its not another church.

So my choise today was to hike 20km over the mountains to Burgos or go see the archeological site and figure out how to get to Burgos later.

Not walking won! I slept in an extra hour, took the time to grab breakfast in town (a warm, flakey ham and cheese empanada, yum!) and walk to the visitor center.  The 10am tour for the dig site was full but there was room on the 1:20 tour. And I would have time to tour the archeological park at 11:30. All the tours were in spanish. Ok maybe this will work. 

I read in the lobby for a while then I walked the 300m to the archeological park. The archeological park showcases different aspects of pre historical life and has different types of primitive dwellings. 

Our tour guide Beatriz was very informative. I understood and learned a lot but I wish my Spanish was good enough to understand it all.  Beatriz demonstrated how to make tool is sharpens rock using another rock to chip an edge on it. She also demonstrated making weapons with flint chips of rocks. 

We moved from section to section and the guide talked about tools marking bone and rituals of burying the dead. One section was on cave paintings. They used three colors: black from carbon (burnt wood) and yellow and red made from grinding certain types of rocks/minerals. Most of the meaning of the paintings is unknown but there are two types, positive: like the drawings of people and animals and negative (not referring to bad): spraying paint over your hand will leave a non-painted spot where your hand was. The second method is interesting because not all the hands used all five fingers. They don't know if this is do to a missing finger or made as a symbol by bending one finger down. 

Beatriz demonstrated the evolution of some of the weapons: spears, throwing spears, spears using a fulcrum lever tool to whip them and bow & arrows. She let anyone who wanted to try, mostly the kids. 

In the larger more recent dwelling, she talked about the benefits of fire. Then she made it by using a bow string to spin a dowel fast and make a coal which she transferred to a nest of something that catches fire easily. She blew on it and spun it around till it caught fire. Very cool. 

I made a sandwich for lunch. Next it was time to board the bus to the dig site, thus ruining my no transportation streak! 

The excavation site is important because it led to he discovery of a previously unknown pre human ancestor called Homo Ancestor. They ate their dead. This is know because of the tool marks on the bones discovered. Beatriz also compared the skulls of the modern humans and Homo Ancestor. The last photo is of what a tribe of Homo Ancestor might have looked like and it may not be suitable for children of all ages. 

There were also animals in this region of Spain that we commonly think of as African animals: tigers, rhinos, elephants...