One of the most significant controversies in the study of human evolution and migration is determining when and by what route the first hominids arrived in Europe from Africa. Recent geological dating techniques applied to the Orce sites in the Baza basin, Granada, Spain, have discovered human remains that are approximately 1.3 million years old. This finding supports the hypothesis that humans may have entered Europe through the southern Iberian Peninsula via the Strait of Gibraltar, rather than returning to the Mediterranean through Asia.
New Dating Techniques Reveal Ancient Hominids
According to a report by the University of Barcelona, the study, led by Luís Gibert of the University of Barcelona’s Faculty of Earth Sciences, in collaboration with researchers from the Berkeley Geochronology Centre and Murray State University in the United States, utilized paleomagnetism to date the Orce region. Paleomagnetism studies the inversion of the Earth’s magnetic poles, recorded in minerals, to establish time periods. The new dating involved an area of Orce that had never been sampled before and was protected from erosion.
“The uniqueness of these sites is that they are stratified and within a very long sedimentary sequence, more than eighty meters (262 feet) long,” explained Gibert.
This extensive sequence allowed the identification of a magnetic polarity sequence with five magnetic events, placing the Orce sites between the Olduvai and Jaramillo subchron, approximately between 1.77 and 1.07 million years ago. Through a statistical age model, the researchers refined the chronology to a margin of error of only 70,000 years.
The oldest site, Venta Micena, dates back to 1.32 million years ago, followed by Barranco León at 1.28 million years, and Fuente Nueva 3 at 1.23 million years.
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