Homo heidelbergensis is an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human which existed during the Middle Pleistocene. It was subsumed as a subspecies of H. erectus in 1950 as H. e. heidelbergensis, but towards the end of the century, it was more widely classified as its own species. It is debated whether or not to constrain H. heidelbergensis to only Europe or to also include African and Asian specimens, and this is further confounded by the type specimen being a jawbone, because jawbones feature few diagnostic traits and are generally missing among Middle Pleistocene specimens. Thus, it is debated if some of these specimens could be split off into their own species or a subspecies of H. erectus. Because the classification is so disputed, the Middle Pleistocene is often called the "muddle in the middle".
Homo antecessor is an extinct species of archaic human recorded in the Spanish Sierra de Atapuerca, a productive archaeological site, from 1.2 to 0.8 million years ago during the Early Pleistocene. Populations of this species may have been present elsewhere in Western Europe, and were among the first to colonise that region of the world, hence the name. The first fossils were found in the Gran Dolina cave in 1994, and the species was formally described in 1997 as the last common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals, supplanting the more conventional H. heidelbergensis in this position. H. antecessor has since been reinterpreted as an offshoot from the modern human line, although probably one branching off just before the modern human/Neanderthal split.
The Atapuerca Mountains is a karstic hill formation near the village of Atapuerca in the province of Burgos, northern Spain.
Ceprano Man, Argil, and Ceprano Calvarium, is a Middle Pleistocene archaic human fossil, a single skull cap (calvarium), accidentally unearthed in a highway construction project in 1994 near Ceprano in the Province of Frosinone, Italy. It was initially considered Homo cepranensis, Homo erectus, or possibly Homo antecessor; but in recent studies, most regard it either as a form of Homo heidelbergensis sharing affinities with African forms, or an early morph of Neanderthal.
Juan Luis Arsuaga Ferreras is a Spanish paleoanthropologist and author known for his work in the Atapuerca Archaeological Site.
Archaic humans is a broad category denoting all species of the genus Homo that are not Homo sapiens. Among the earliest modern human remains are those from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, Florisbad in South Africa (259 ka), and Omo-Kibish I in southern Ethiopia. Some examples of archaic humans include H. antecessor (1200–770 ka), H. bodoensis (1200–300 ka), H. heidelbergensis (600–200 ka), Neanderthals, H. rhodesiensis (300–125 ka) and Denisovans,
Eudald Carbonell i Roura is a Spanish archaeologist, anthropologist and paleontologist.
Miguelón is the popular nickname for a human skull, classified as either late Homo heidelbergensis or as early Homo neanderthalensis. It has been estimated to date to 430,000 years ago. It is one of more than 5,500 fossils belonging to early human populations which have been found in the Sima de los Huesos site in the Sierra de Atapuerca in northern Spain.
Grotte du Vallonnet is an archaeological site located near Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, between Monaco and Menton, in France, that was first discovered in 1958. Stone tools found at the site have been dated to between 1 and 1.05 million years old, making it one of the earliest sites of human settlement known in Europe.
Tautavel Man refers to the archaic humans which—from approximately 550,000 to 400,000 years ago—inhabited the Caune de l’Arago, a limestone cave in Tautavel, France. They are generally grouped as part of a long and highly variable lineage of transitional morphs which inhabited the Middle Pleistocene of Europe, and would eventually evolve into the Neanderthals. They have been variably assigned to either H. (s.?) heidelbergensis, or as a European subspecies of H. erectus as H. e. tautavelensis. The skull is reconstructed based on the specimens Arago 21 and 47, and it is, to a degree, more characteristic of what might be considered a typical H. erectus morphology than a typical H. heidelbergensis morphology. The brain capacity is 1,166 cc. They seem to have had an overall robust skeleton. Average height may have been 166 cm.
Several expansions of populations of archaic humans out of Africa and throughout Eurasia took place in the course of the Lower Paleolithic, and into the beginning Middle Paleolithic, between about 2.1 million and 0.2 million years ago (Ma). These expansions are collectively known as Out of Africa I, in contrast to the expansion of Homo sapiens (anatomically modern humans) into Eurasia, which may have begun shortly after 0.2 million years ago.
Boxgrove Man is a name given to three fossils of early humans, found at Boxgrove in Sussex, and dated to about 480,000 years old. One piece of the tibia (shinbone) and two teeth were found. The tibia was of a mature well-built man, perhaps from the common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals, and the teeth are thought to be of early Neanderthals. They are the oldest fossils of the genus homo found in Britain.
Xujiayao, located in the Nihewan Basin in China, is an early Late Pleistocene paleoanthropological site famous for its archaic hominin fossils.
Ursus dolinensis is an extinct mammalian carnivore species of the Ursidae family. Its fossilized remains were unearthed from the lowest layers of the stratigraphic sequence at the archaeological and paleontological site of Gran Dolina, that is a part of the Atapuerca Mountains complex in the Burgos province, northern Spain. The species was described by Nuria Garcia and Juan Luis Arsuaga in a 2001 publication. Skeletal fossils, mainly cranial fragments were recovered from the sediment units TD 3 and in particular TD 4. Presence in these layers suggests a chronology in between 900,000 and 780,000 years ago, which falls into the Calabrian stage of the early Pleistocene.
Aroeira 3 is a 400,000 year old Homo heidelbergensis hominid skull which was discovered in the Aroeira cave, Portugal. It is the earliest human trace in Portugal. H. heidelbergensis existed at the transition between Homo erectus and early Neanderthals and used both stone tools and fire. The skull was damaged during the 2014 excavation but was restored in the following two years. In 2017 the description of the skull was published in PNAS. It is on display in the National Archaeology Museum (Lisbon).
Balanica is a cave complex and paleoarchaeological site in the City of Niš' municipality of Niška Banja in southeast Serbia. It consists of Velika Balanica and Mala Balanica. The entrances of two caves are 7 m (23 ft) apart, at an elevation of 329 m (1,079 ft), and form one cave system. A third cave, Pešturina, is also nearby. The two Balanica caves extend parallel to each other, likely being connected at the rear.
Paleolithic in the Iberian peninsula is the longest period of its prehistory, starting c. 1.3 million of years (Ma) ago and ending almost at the same time as Pleistocene, first epoch of Quaternary, c. 11.500 years or 11.5 ka ago. It was a period characterized by climate oscillations between ice ages and small interglacials, producing heavy changes in Iberia's orography. Cultural change within the period is usually described in terms of lithic industry evolution, as described by Grahame Clark.
Agamenón, also known as Agamemnon, is a fossil calvarium belonging to an early Neanderthal that lived at the site of Atapuerca around 430,000 years ago. The crania recovered from Sima de los Huesos have multiple specimen catalogues including Sima de los Huesos 4, SH 4, Cranium 4, Cr4, and Skull 4. Original analyses of the specimen concluded that the individual was deaf, although further study has proven that this is not the case. It is now held at the Museum of Human Evolution.
Benjamina is the nickname of a skull belonging to an early Neanderthal child that is the earliest documented case of lambdoid craniosynostosis in the human fossil record. It was recovered from Sima de los Huesos, Spain, aged around 530 ka, minimum. It has many catalogues, such as Sima de los Huesos 14, SH 14, Cranium 14, and Cr14.
The Montmaurin-La Niche (M-LN) mandible is a fossil jawbone with teeth discovered on June 18, 1949 by Louis Mèroc. As well as the mandible, a collection of hominin remains were discovered in the neighboring Coupe-Gorge cavity. They probably represent the same lineage of hominin, dated precisely to around 250,000 years and likely represent a distinct lineage of southern Middle Pleistocene hominins.
