Orce is a municipality located in the

province of Granada Granada is a province of southern Spain, in the eastern part of the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is bordered by the provinces of Albacete, Murcia, Almería, Jaén, Córdoba, Málaga, and the Mediterranean Sea (along the Costa Tropi ...

, in southeastern

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

. According to the 2009

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

( INE), the town has a population of 1,333 inhabitants.

Paleoanthropology

Orce is the location of the paleo-

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

sites known as Barranco León, Venta Micena, and Fuente Nueva 3, near the basin of an ancient lake where fossils have been preserved in sediment. Josep Gibert of the M. Crusafont Institute in

Sabadell Sabadell () is a city and municipality in Catalonia, Spain. It is in the south of the ''comarca'' of Vallès Occidental, where it is one of the two capitals, the other being Terrassa. It is located on the River Ripoll, north of Barcelona, a ...

has led an excavation team there. He asserts that the sites have

Oldowan The Oldowan (or Mode I) was a widespread stone tool archaeological industry during the early Lower Paleolithic spanning the late Pliocene and the first half of the Early Pleistocene. These early tools were simple, usually made by chipping one ...

-style stone tools dating between 1.5 and 1.8 million years ago. If the early estimates are supported, these would represent the oldest stone tool finds in Europe and of settlers in Europe. Other scholars prefer a more conservative date for the stone tools of 1.2 million years. Together with the

hominid The Hominidae (), whose members are known as the great apes or hominids (), are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: '' Pongo'' (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); '' Gorilla'' (the ...

remains at the

Atapuerca Mountains The Atapuerca Mountains () is a karst topography, karstic hill formation near the village of Atapuerca, Province of Burgos, Atapuerca in the province of Burgos (Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Castile and Leon), northern ...

, the tools are evidence that human ancestors settled in western Europe more than one million years (Ma) ago. Recent numerical dating studies using

Electron Spin Resonance Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) or electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy is a method for studying materials that have unpaired electrons. The basic concepts of EPR are analogous to those of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), but the spin ...

(ESR) method applied to fossil teeth and quartz grains have provided ages of ca. 1.2 Ma for Fuente Nueva 3, and ca. 1.4 Ma for Barranco León and Venta Micena.

References

External links

Official site of the Village of Orce
Municipalities in the Province of Granada {{Granada-geo-stub

Paleoanthropology

See also

References

External links