The earliest colonization of Europe: the short chronology revisited.

Dennell, Robin ; Roebroeks, Wil

Long-running discussions about when Europe was first colonized have recently been fuelled by new discoveries from the Iberian peninsula, which reports hominid occupation by 800,000, or even by 1.8 million years ago. The proceedings of the important Tautavel workshop (1993), published as The earliest occupation of Europe (Roebroeks $ van Kolfschoten (ed.) 1995), are now central. This new assessment takes forward ANTIQUITY's notice by Roebroeks & van Kolfschoten of 1994 (68: 489-503).

Reviewing the evidence pertinent to the first human settlement of Europe, both of us have argued that the European archaeological record changes substantially after 500,000 years ago (see TABLE 1); we have taken this as indicating that Europe was not colonized until around half a million years ago (Dennell 1983; Roebroeks & van Kolfschoten 1994). As discussed by Roebroeks (1996), the failure of the search in northern Europe for 'eoliths' in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and of later investigations looking for comparable Lower Pleistocene lithic assemblages, shows the absence of hominids from that region prior to the Middle Pleistocene beyond reasonable doubt.(1) The southern parts of Europe have been investigated for as long but not nearly as intensively; there is a greater probability of surprise there. Whilst Europe was primarily 'the empty continent' until perhaps 500,000 years ago, there might have been earlier, but sporadic and intermittent, occupation around the Mediterranean when conditions permitted (Dennell 1983). But until very recently, southern Europe simply did not produce good evidence for hominid occupation before half a million years ago. Potentially earlier sites have either been re-dated to after or around 500,000 years ago (e.g. Isernia; Roebroeks & van Kolfschoten 1994), and/or shown to lack convincing evidence for hominids, e.g. Le Vallonet (France) (White 1995) and the Lower Pleistocene Massif Central sites (France) (Rayhal et al. 1995a).

The new Iberian finds

Two Iberian localities have recently yielded surprises: Atapuerca near Burgos in northern Spain, and the Orce area further south in Andalusia. At both, evidence for hominids is claimed that is substantially older than the previously earliest traces of occupation of Iberia, dated to the earlier part of the Middle Pleistocene (Raposo & Santonja 1995). The new Atapuerca evidence has been published in two papers in Science (Carbonell et al. 1995; Pares & Perez-Gonzalez 1995), while the latest Orce evidence was presented to an international conference held in Orce in September 1995, at which we were present.

Atapuerca

The new finds from Atapuerca consist of both hominid remains and artefacts, recovered from level TD6 at the Trinchera Dolina site (Carbonell et al. 1995). Earlier age-estimates for this level were based on biostratigraphical evidence, mainly by correlating the types of microfauna found in the TD6 horizon with early Middle Pleistocene faunas outside Iberia, such as Sussen-born (Germany) and West Runton (England), both of which are around 500,000 years old. This age assessment also agreed well with the location of the Brunhes-Matuyama palaeo-magnetic boundary (c. 780,000 years ago) deeper in the section, at around TD2/3 (cf. Aguirre & Hoyos 1992; Carbonell & Rodriguez 1994). The initial biostratigraphical interpretation of the TD6 horizon therefore suggested that Atapuerca was first occupied shortly before the earliest north and central European sites such as Boxgrove (England) (Gamble 1994; Roberts et al. 1994), Miesenheim and Mauer (Germany) (Bosinski 1995). The excavators' original correlation of the TD6 level to Oxygen Isotope Stage 13 and the presence of handaxes in the TD6 assemblage fitted very well into the short chronology-scenario for Europe's earliest occupation (cf. TABLE 1).

Re-analysis of the Atapuerca TD doline infill now places the Brunhes-Matuyama boundary well above the TD6 horizon, giving the hominid remains and artefacts an age in excess of 800,000 years. This would imply that southern Europe was first occupied substantially earlier than northern Europe. That in itself is not unreasonable, as early hominids probably required different social and subsistence strategies in order to cope with the colder and harsher environments of northern Europe. However, the new age-estimate is difficult to reconcile with faunas from the end of the Lower Pleistocene in other parts of Europe, which have a different species composition (Roebroeks & van Kolfschoten 1995).

There are various solutions to this dilemma. The simplest is that the new palaeo-magnetic dating are incorrect, even though they are internally consistent and appear to have been very thorough. Another is that the reversed polarity at the base of the TD section is not part of the Matuyama, but one of the brief episodes of reversed polarity that occurred within the last 780,000 years of the Brunhes period of normal polarity (Champion et al. 1988). These episodes are, however, very brief, and normally detected under conditions of rapid sedimentation; these conditions may have prevailed during the deposition of the lower levels of the TD sequence at Atapuerca, as there are hardly any changes in faunal composition, and the preservation of the bone material seems to be excellent. A third possibility is that the initial fennel identifications were at fault. There is also the possibility of endemism: in other words, the Iberian fauna evolved at a different rate and in isolation from northern Europe. However, this argument involves special pleading, as there is no reason to invoke endemism on this scale for other parts of Europe. A final possibility is that the north European dates for the type of faunal assemblages found at, for example, Sussenborn and West Runton are simply too young. This too is very unlikely, as none of these assemblages has a reversed polarity. Something is clearly wrong here with our chronologies for north and south Europe, even if we cannot yet identify the source of error. However, given the thoroughness of the palaeomagnetic analyses, it is up to palaeontologists now to challenge the dating of TD6 to the late Lower Pleistocene.

Orce

Other new finds come from three sites in the Orce basin in Andalusia, where evidence is claimed for early Pleistocene occupation as early as 1.8 million years ago, both in the form of hominid remains and stone tools (see Gibert 1992; Gibert et al. 1994; Roe 1995; Raposo & Santonja 1995; Tixier et al. 1995). The Orce basin was originally a large lake c. 60x40 km which gradually filled with silts; the sites are found around its former margins. One of the sites is Venta Micena, which comprises a large number of well-preserved and often articulated fossil vertebrate remains which were probably accumulated by large carnivores. These remains include a cranial fragment and an adult and a juvenile humeral diaphysis that are claimed to be hominid. Hominids are also claimed to have broken some, and to have cut at least three, of the other animal bones at this site, and to have accumulated the skulls of large animals (Martinez Navarro et al. 1994). At Barranco Leon, a hippopotamus skeleton was found in layer 5, along with stone artefacts and a claimed hominid tooth fragment. Stone tools were also found at the third site, Fuente Nueva 3 (Tixier et al. 1995). Additionally, a hominid phalange and humeral fragment are claimed from a Lower Pleistocene context from a near-by cave site of Cueva Vittoria.

The problems concerning these sites are the usual ones of identification and dating. The hominid remains are ambiguous, to say the least. Claims that they are hominid rest on fractal geometric analysis of the cranial sutures (Palmqvist & Gibert 1995), canonical discriminant analysis of the Cueva Vittoria phalange (Palmqvist el al. 1995), Fourier analysis of the cross-section of the Venta Micena humerus (Peres Claros 1995) and various immunological analyses (Borja & Olivares 1995; Lowenstein 1995), all of which are highly esoteric techniques. Although neither of us is a hominid palaeontologist, it is fair to say that neither of us heard any of those present at the conference say that any of the specimens were credible as hominids on morphological grounds, and these claims are also controversial within Spain itself (e.g. Agusti & Moya-Sola 1987). There are also several taphonomic explanations of the condition and spatial patterning of the animal remains at Venta Micena that do not have to include hominid agencies. In contrast, there is little doubt that the artefacts from Fuente Nueva 3 and Barranco Leon 5 are both genuine and in situ.

The dating of these finds remains problematic, and has so far been accomplished palaeomagnetically and biostratigraphically. Venta Micena is claimed to lie slightly above the Olduvai Subchron of normal polarity (1.6 million years ago), whereas Barranco Leon and Fuente Nueva 3 have tentatively been dated to its lower limit of 1.8 million years ago. Our own feeling is that the palaeomagnetic and biostratigraphic data need to be much more detailed before these age-estimates are acceptable. The sites found to date may well be Lower Pleistocene in age (and thus more than 780,000 years old), but whether the claimed 'Olduvai Event' is in fact the much younger Jaramillo Event (0.9 million years ago), which also has a normal polarity has not, in our view, been clearly demonstrated. Overall, we agree with Roe's (1995: 11) conclusion:

it would be most unwise at the present stage of the research to go too deeply into the potential significance of the discoveries made at Orce. There is still some way to go before the basic facts are established beyond doubt or challenge.

Dating and early European settlement

As a note of caution, the dating techniques relevent to the first occupation of Europe need better calibration. We need constantly to bear in mind that Pleistocene regional chronologies are aggregates of short and often discontinuous local episodes. For all the advances in dating techniques over the last 20 years, many regional correlations remain weak, especially between northern and southern Europe. In northern Europe, key marker horizons are the glacigenic deposits and/or landforms of, for example, the Anglian/Elsterian and the Saalian glaciations that are around or younger than 500,000 years old, backed up by detailed biostratigraphical studies (cf. Roebroeks & van Kolfschoten 1994), whereas in Iberia and in southern Europe generally, more reliance is placed on palaeomagnetism, and locating the Brunhes-Matuyama boundary at c. 780,000 BP. Large mammals generally evolved too slowly, and were tolerant of too wide a range of environments to provide closely-defined regional correlations: these are best obtained by studying the microfauna, the voles, shrews and mice, both individually and in association with each other. Some of the chronological discrepancies over the Atapuerca evidence could be simply a consequence of using different dating methods.

Europe in its wider context

Notwithstanding these problems, Iberia now appears to have been occupied substantially earlier than northern and central Europe was around 500,000 years ago. Where did these early hominids come from? And what might we now expect to find in southern Europe?

The three most likely points of entry into Europe are the straits of Gibraltar from northern Africa; the straits of the Bosphorus from Turkey; or north of the Black Sea into eastern Europe. Determining which route(s) was or were taken is not easy given the evidence currently available.

At times of low sea-level, the straits of Gibraltar are only 12 km wide. However, northern Africa has no finds earlier than one million BP; Raynal's et al. (1995b) work has clearly shown hat the earliest traces of occupation from the classic Casablanca area date from only about 800,000 BP. These traces are very meagre; it is only well into the Middle Pleistocene that occupation becomes more substantial there, just as it does on the other side of the Mediterranean. The straits of the Bosphorus are a more likely entry point from the Near East; they would have been an insignificant barrier, especially at times of low sea-level, and Ubeidiya (Israel) a very clear Lower Pleistocene site, dated at c. 1.4 million years BP (Tchernov 1989). However, the earliest evidence for hominids in Turkey and Greece so far dates from the beginning of the Middle Pleistocene, and the absence of earlier evidence may simply reflect the lack of exploration in this region (Darlas 1995). Entry via a route north of the Black Sea is also possible. The hominid jaw and artefacts from Dmanisi (Georgia) (Dzaparidze et al. 1989) still need some solid dating of the find-bearing sediments: the widely-quoted date of 1.8 million years BP (Gabunia & Vekua 1995) was obtained on a basalt below these deposits, whose normal polarity is interpreted as indicative of the Olduvai Subchron. Ongoing work on the geology of the site suggests that both the fauna and the associated hominid mandible occur in infilled mammalian burrows/dens, with an infill of reversed polarity; hence the site could be of Matuyama age (Ferring et al. 1996), and thus between 0.8 and 1.6 million years old. Before the discovery of the Dmanisi mandible, the fauna of the site was thought Middle Pleistocene (Vekua 1986: 87), while correlation with Near Eastern and European sequences does not give strong support to an age of 1.8 million years; an age within the time-range of 1.5-1.0 million years is more reasonable (Bar-Yosef 1994: 228). Indeed, Gunther Brauer pointed out in his paper at the Orce conference that the Dmanisi mandible shares most characteristics with late representatives of Homo erectus, and is more 'progressive' than hominid fossils from around one million years ago. Even if hominids moved north from Dmanisi as late as one million years ago and then westwards into Roumania, there is still no clear evidence that they were in eastern Europe before half a million years ago (Praslov 1995; Valoch 1995).

Some archaeological problems

Whilst it is appropriate to consider the colonization of Europe by hominids within a wider framework of faunal changes (e.g. Turner 1994), the archaeological evidence cannot be ignored. The earliest assemblages in North Africa and Israel are Acheulean in that they contain hand-axes (Rayhal et al. 1995b; Bar-Yosef 1994). However, these have not (yet, perhaps?) been found in the Orce Basin or in the TD6 horizon at Atapuerca. At Fuente Nueva 3 the small assemblage is dominated by flakes of Middle Palaeolithic appearance (Tixier et al. 1995), while the hand-axes that were earlier reported from Atapuerca TD6 (Carbonell and Arsuaga 1992) are not well provenanced (Carbonell pers. comm. 1996). Instead, the TD6 assemblage is characterized now as a pre-Acheulean one (or Mode 1) by Carbonell et al. (1995). At other early (from 500,000 onwards) sites along the Mediterranean assemblages with and without hand-axes occur: at Isernia and La Polledrara (Italy) hand-axes are absent, while Venosa-Notarchirico (Italy) yielded interstratified industries with and without handaxes (Mussi 1995). The earliest sites in northern Europe (such as Boxgrove) can be described as Acheulean, as can contemporaneous sites from Iberia, France, western Germany, Italy and Greece. Central and eastern Europe are different again, as sites such as Bilzingsleben and Schoningen in Germany, and Vertesszollos in Hungary have non-Acheulean flake assemblages. On archaeological grounds, therefore, the Acheulean of northern and western Europe can be sensibly derived from a Near Eastern (or even North African) background, unlike the earliest assemblages along the Mediterranean and in eastern Europe (we have to bear in mind though that the small size of the assemblages from both Atapuerca TD6 and the Fuente Nueva and Barranco Leon sites may be an important factor here). As Rolland (1992) has suggested, it may be necessary to derive these from an Asian background, possibly via entry into Europe from northern Iran and Turkey. Although it is simpler to assume that Europe was first colonized along the Mediterranean by one population that later expanded northwards, we should not exclude the possibility of two (or more) phases, each with a different starting-point, possibly a different tradition of making artefacts, and even perhaps, a different type of hominid.

The first colonization reconsidered

As with passport control, we need to establish port and date of entry. In our view, the most likely point of entry is via the straits of Bosphorus. We would thus expect the earliest evidence for hominids to occur in Turkey and Greece once these areas are better explored. If we accept the new evidence from Atapuerca, we should also expect evidence for hominids older than 800,000 years ago from the coastal areas of former Yugoslavia, Italy, France and southern Spain.

How much earlier than 800,000 years ago is still a matter of conjecture. Proponents of a 'long' chronology might expect the earliest evidence from southern Europe to be as old as the earliest dates claimed for Asia: 1.8 million years at Dmanisi (Georgia), 1.8 million in Java (Swisher & Curtis 1994), 1.9 million years at Longgupo (China) (Wanpo et al. 1995), or a mimimum of 1.9 million years for artefacts at Riwat (Pakistan) (Dennell et al. 1988).(2) The Orce basin sites (and other controversial sites in France) could thus be accommodated within a long chronology. Those advocating a 'short' chronology would base their case on the date of 1.4 or even 1.0 million years ago for 'Ubeidiya, and an age of only 1.5-1.0 million years for Dmanisi, and not expect anything much older than 800,000 years old in Spain, or much before one million years ago in Greece and Turkey. Europe would thus be a peripheral peninsula on the Asian land-mass, uninhabited for up to a million years after hominids first appeared in Asia.

Both views can in fact be accommodated within a modified 'short' chronology. Hominids might have occasionally moved into southern Europe well before 500,000 years ago, as and when conditions permitted, but without living there 'continuously'. On this scenario, the earliest hominids remained confined to areas south of roughly 35 [degrees] north, whether in Iberia, Georgia or China, constrained by their winter foraging requirements, and a minimum daylight tolerance of around 10 hours. Permanent occupation of Europe might not have occurred until only 500,000 years ago, when the earliest evidence for hominids is also found in northern Europe. The absence of Lower and early Middle Pleistocene sites north of the Pyrenees and Alps suggests that even if hominids were around the Mediterranean perimeter before 500,000 years BP, it required a quantum leap in their behaviour to take them north of 35 [degrees] and across the many inland barriers of central Spain, the Pyrenees, Massif Central, Alps, Dolomites, Transylvanian Alps and so on into northern and even central Europe. Likewise, a route around the Black Sea into eastern Europe would have encountered few geographical barriers, but would still have required hominids to adapt to a more continental regime (Rolland 1992). It is tempting to attribute the 500,000 years BP phase of Europe's colonization to a much greater degree of hunting proficiency and planning-depth, as indicated by the most recent evidence from Boxgrove and Schoningen for hunting with sophisticated spears and butchering animals in a systematic, unhurried manner (Roberts pers. comm.; Thieme & Maier 1995).

Discussion

While these speculations started from the possibility that the Mediterranean perimeter may have been occupied substantially earlier than in northern Europe, we must not confuse the likelihood of such intermittent presence with its certainty: each piece of evidence has to be considered in its own right, not by consistency with a fashionable interpretation. At present, a 'short' chronology is more reasonable than a 'long' one for northern Europe, and perhaps even for southern Europe outside Spain, if that was initially colonized via North Africa and not the Near East. In our view, a 'fast' occupation of central and northern Europe is also more plausible than one that is 'slow': when these parts of Europe were first colonized, occupation took place rapidly, geologically-speaking. It remains to be seen whether the same is true for the Mediterranean perimeter. Establishing precisely when, where and under what conditions hominids were present or absent in Europe is crucial to understanding the limitations of earlier hominids and their evolution in terms of gradual versus punctuated equilibria. For these reasons, the new evidence from Atapuerca needs to be taken very seriously, and that from Orce retained as an intriguing possibility that merits international, independent verification. Meanwhile, a 'short' and 'fast' model seems to us the best for the initial colonization of this continent north of Iberia and the Mediterranean perimeter; in those areas, a longer and possibly slower pattern of immigration may prove more appropriate.

Acknowledgements. We wish to thank J.M. Bermudez do Castro, E. Carbonell, T. van Kolfschoten, M. Roberts, D. Roe, H. Thieme, A. Turq and M. Wolpoff for their various contributions to the discussions dealt with in this paper, the conference organizers of the Orce meeting for their hospitality, and H.A. de Lorm for making the drawings.

TABLE 1. Schematic differences within the European Palaeolithic record between the period before and after about 500,000 years ago (from Roebroeks & Van Kolfschoten 1994).

before 500,000 years ago

small series of isolated pieces selected from a natural pebble background 'artefacts' found in a disturbed context (coarse matrix) contested 'primitive' assemblages no human remains at all

after 500,000 years ago

large collections from excavated knapping floors with conjoinable material primary context sites (fine-grained matrix) uncontested Acheulean and non-Acheulean industries human remains common

FIGURE 1. Maps of key sites in Asia (above) and Europe (below) mentioned in the text.

1 Atapuerca 2 Bilzingsleben 3 Boxgrove 4 Isernia 5 Meuer 6 Miesenheim 7 La Polledrara 8 Schoningen 9 Le Vallonet 10 Venosa 11 Orce 12 Vertesszollos 13 West Runton

1 This is not a view shared by all workers in that area, though. A French team recently even published a Pliocene assemblage consisting of 'flakes' and 'denticulated choppers' found in roughly 2-5 million year old deposits in the southern Paris Basin (Boitel et al. 1996).

2 Although this high age scenario for the earliest Out of Africa is very fashionable at the moment (e.g. Beardsley 1996), we have to bear in mind that none of the sites mentioned here is uncontroversial. The problems around dating and taphonomy of Dmanisi have already been mentioned above. The relevance of the Swishor et al. (1994) dates has been questioned by De Vos and Sondaar, who conclude 'that the 40Ar/39Ar dates of Swisher et al. may themselves be "technically correct", but until their geological context is established, it is premature to attach such far reaching conclusions to these new age estimates for the hominid of Java' (1994: 1726). As for Longgupo, the 'artefactual' evidence does not look very convincing at all, whereas the hominid status of the Early Pleistocene fossils has been called into question too (e.g. by Wolpoff pers. comm. 1996, who studied the Longgupo finds). For Riwat, finally, some doubts have been cast on the artefacts (Stapert & Hemingway 1989); both of us are convinced that there are good artefacts there, however surprisingly high their age might be.

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