Study Finds Humans Survived Ice Age Winters in Prehistoric Iberia

Exterior presumption of Cueva Grande. Credit: Francisco Javier Aragoncillo et al. / CC BY 4.0

A caller survey challenges longstanding assumptions astir quality habitation successful the interior landscapes of prehistoric Iberia during the Ice Age.

Led by Francisco Javier Aragoncillo and published successful the diary Antiquity, the probe provides caller grounds that hunter-gatherer groups occupied high-altitude regions of the Iberian Peninsula during the Late Pleistocene, contempt what were antecedently thought to beryllium prohibitive biology conditions.

For decades, the bosom of Iberia was seen arsenic empty

Archaeologists agelong believed that the interior of the Iberian Peninsula—especially the plateaus and mountainous zones of the cardinal Iberian system—was mostly uninhabited during the aboriginal and mediate Upper Palaeolithic, astir 45,000 to 20,000 years ago.

The prevailing mentation was that the region’s acold continental climate, precocious altitude, and constricted earthy structure made it excessively harsh for quality survival. Areas on the Tajo-Ebro interfluve, averaging 1,200 meters supra oversea level and facing agelong winters beneath freezing, had yielded astir nary confirmed Palaeolithic concern sites.

New excavations situation the “no man’s land” idea

Aragoncillo’s squad acceptable retired to find whether the deficiency of findings reflected a existent lack oregon simply a spread successful research. Through systematic surveys and selective excavations, the researchers explored respective upland locations—Cueva Grande, El Bosque, Ciño Negro, and La Vega de Albarcaz—in the Castilian subdivision of the Iberian System. These were places erstwhile considered excessively inhospitable for aboriginal humans.

At Cueva Grande, adjacent the headwaters of the Arandilla River astatine 1,250 meters elevation, excavations revealed flint tools, carnal bones, and charcoal fragments. Radiocarbon tests placed the remains successful the precocious Magdalenian period, showing quality enactment wherever nary had been expected.

El Bosque Shelter. Credit: Francisco Javier Aragoncillo et al. / CC BY 4.0

At El Bosque, worldly grounds suggested a little concern betwixt the Upper Palaeolithic and aboriginal Neolithic.

A flint burin connected truncation discovered astatine the Ciño Negro site. Credit: Francisco Javier Aragoncillo et al. / CC BY 4.0

At Ciño Negro, a burned country and a distinctive burin instrumentality indicated a last Upper Palaeolithic oregon aboriginal Holocene presence.

Quartzite artefacts from La Vega de Albarcaz. Credit: Francisco Javier Aragoncillo et al. / CC BY 4.0

At La Vega de Albarcaz, a postulation of flint and quartzite tools—some displaying Middle Palaeolithic features—hinted that humans whitethorn person reached the tract adjacent earlier than thought.

Cold highlands erstwhile supported quality settlement

The discoveries uncover that inland uplands were not barren frontiers. Despite freezing winters and steep terrain, quality groups returned repeatedly to these landscapes implicit thousands of years.

View of the La Vega de Albarcaz tract from the east. Credit: Francisco Javier Aragoncillo et al. / CC BY 4.0

The survey suggests that earlier models underestimated however adaptable prehistoric populations were, and that the evident deficiency of concern was apt owed to erosion, sediment cover, and constricted probe alternatively than existent absence.

A caller presumption of prehistoric Iberia emerges

Aragoncillo’s findings adhd to increasing grounds that humans inhabited cardinal Iberia adjacent during the harshest phases of the past Ice Age. Recent studies successful different parts of the Iberian Meseta besides amusement traces of Upper Palaeolithic and aboriginal Holocene life, overturning the aged thought that the portion was a “no man’s land.”

The researchers stress that their enactment is preliminary, but it opens a caller section successful the survey of Iberian prehistory. The uplands, erstwhile dismissed arsenic uninhabitable, present look to clasp cardinal clues astir quality resilience and adaptation.

In the end, the survey reshapes however scientists presumption prehistoric Iberia—less arsenic an empty, frozen plateau and much arsenic a scenery that challenged, but ne'er wholly deterred, aboriginal quality life.