Description : The Sima de los Huesos designates a chasm that contains a 430,000-year-old site, 2 whose undeniable richness in fossils makes it the main source of information on the paleoanthropology of this period. The cave is made up of a room at the bottom of a 14-meter well, excavated by an ancient underground river in the Cueva Mayor de la Sierra de Atapuerca (Spain), a massif classified as a World Heritage Site . 3 4 The Sima bone aroused interest in the Sierra de Atapuerca after the discovery of an ancient jawhuman complete in 1976. 3 Later, a large number of fossils were found at the site belonging to at least 28 individuals 5 , which represents more than 80% of the human fossils of the Chibaniense found to date, and constitutes the largest human deposit in the fossil record . 6 The non - accidental nature of this set of bones could represent the oldest documented manifestation of a ritual act 7 300 000 years before the accredited sites is Skhul and Qafzeh in Israel. Multiple impacts, some of them lethal, on several of the skulls attest to the violence of certain deaths, and one of the individuals was certainly killed. 8 1 Those people were dexterous 9 October November so far not been able to demonstrate that there was no spoken language in these individuals, which would set back the development of the language at a much earlier date in human evolution. December October November 13 height similar to the NeandertalesIts broad bones suggest a heavier body than that of modern men, with a lower height. 14 15 16 17 18 The fossils have such an exceptional state of conservation that it was possible to extract the oldest human DNA that has been analyzed to date in 2013 and 2016 , despite the age of the bones. This information has enabled to reconstruct the phylogenetic tree likely among human lineages recent, whose DNA is already known: the Neanderthal man , the man Denisova and modern man . 19 20 . Attributed in principle to Homo heidelbergensis , 21 the Atapuerca team changed the classification in 2014. 2In any case, since its discovery, the individuals of the Sima de los Huesos were close to the ancestors of the Denisovians, and their lineage is that of the first Neanderthals, who lived in Europe for 400,000, until the arrival of man. modern 50,000 years ago. 22 2 19 20 Excavations are still carried out every summer since 1984. 3 At a rate of several centimeters per year, important discoveries are still waiting.
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