Portal de Caravaca de la Cruz
www.portaldecaravaca.com
The campaign has also brought to light numerous remains of paleolithic carving, including retouched pieces of flint in excellent state of preservation, used by the men who inhabited the cave almost a million years ago.
In the Black Cave was located the presence of man-made fire and the oldest ax in Europe
The 30th excavation campaign in 'La Cueva Negra' of La Encarnación has concluded with findings and research that reaffirm the antiquity and importance of the Caravaqueño site as a key place for the knowledge of the first hominids.
The mayor of Caravaca de la Cruz, José Francisco García, along with the general director of Cultural Property, Juan Antonio Lorca, and the councilors of Culture and Pedanías, Juan Manuel de León and José Antonio Sánchez, respectively, have moved to this enclave, located in the Estrecho del Río Quípar, coinciding with the conclusion of the thirtieth edition of the campaign, which took place this summer with the presence of some 15 experts from the University of Murcia and several international universities.
The director of the Field School of Prehistory and Paleoanthropology of the Quaternary of the Region of Murcia, Michael Walker, has received them at the foot of the site, where he stressed that "the icing on the cake of the 2019 campaign has been the determination of the date of 890,000 years of antiquity, according to the investigations carried out by outstanding scientists at the University of Berkeley, in California ".
José Francisco García has stated that the Black Cave has a key deposit status for knowledge of Human Evolution and Paleoanthropology.
In this regard, he recalled that "the cave was frequented by human beings who left their mark in the form of remains of fire and a hand ax, both being the oldest in Europe."
The mayor of Caravaca has highlighted the need to further support the great work being done by the Murcian Association for the Study of Paleoanthropology and the Quaternary (Mupantquat), which maintains a collaboration agreement with the City Council, and the need to also have the support of other public administrations to continue consolidating this field within the international scientific scene.
"We must work on the transfer of private land that affects the area of ​​the excavation to qualify for subsidies that the Autonomous Community allocates to municipalities, improve access and enclosures and permanently expose the main pieces that have been appearing in the last 30 years ", are some of the measures that the first mayor has indicated.
The campaign 2019 has left important findings as remains of extinct fauna, among which stand out part of the antlers and another skull of a large animal, probably the extinct megacerrino (huge species of cervid), in addition to a rib also large , a tooth of the extinct bear Ursus deningeri, and abundant remains of the greater fauna.
Likewise, the campaign has brought to light numerous remains of paleolithic carving, including retouched pieces of flint in excellent state of preservation, and bones scratched by the lithic tools handled by archaic humans.
Remains of the animals that were the subsistence base of the hunters and gatherers that inhabited the cave almost a million years ago, from large mammals to smaller animals have been recovered.
The cave has provided an interesting fauna (sporadic fragments of bear, hyena, lynx and mustelid), presence of remains of extinct species of rhinoceros, elephants (probably mammoth), bison, a giant deer, fallow deer, roe deer, horse, goat, boar , macaque, wild cat, rabbit, hare, squirrel, hedgehog, pika, water rats, shrew, turtle, lizard, frog, toad, snake, and 66 species of birds.
The identification of 7 species of waterfowl implies the proximity of swamps and the presence of riparian forest.
Another of the directors of the excavation, the archaeologist Mariano Lopez of the Murcian association Mupantquat has indicated that "the range of techniques, together with the domain of fire, in addition to the use of mineral resources as well as biological resources present in Alto Quípar and Rambla de Tarragoya, offers us an important vision about the manual dexterity, the technical aptitude, and above all, the cognitive versatility of the recipients of the deposit almost one million years ago ".
These aspects have attracted the attention of the scientific world in various publications and reference presentations.
Source: Ayuntamiento de Caravaca de la Cruz
Privacy policy
- Legal notice
- Cookies