First humans in western Europe

The oldest human fossils in western Europe come from Sima del Elefante, a cave in the Sierra de Atapuerca near Burgos in northern Spain. In 2007, excavators found a piece of lower jaw in a layer dated to about 1.2 to 1.1 million years ago. Together with stone tools and cut-marked animal bones from the same level, it shows that people were living and butchering animals in western Europe far earlier than once thought. In 2022, a further find, a partial face from the same cave, was dated to between 1.4 and 1.1 million years ago. Older stone tools from Orce in southern Spain, about 1.4 million years old, point in the same direction.

These people belonged to the first wave of humans leaving Africa, which carried Homo to Asia and across Europe. Western Europe was cooler and more seasonal than Africa, and the first settlers may have come and gone as climate swung. The Atapuerca fossils are small and the species is not certain. They may be related to Homo antecessor, who lived in a nearby cave some 300,000 years later. Stone tools at other sites suggest people repeatedly pushed into Europe whenever the climate allowed.