This is a project for the History class about the Elephant Pit as a site from Paleolithic.

1. ELEPHANT PIT
Pilar Quirós Iniesta

2.  Location
 Climate
 Historical development
 Material Remains
 Sources

3.  Elephant Pit is located in the Railway Trench, located in the
Sierra of Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain).

4.  Elephant pit belongs to the biggest complex
of Atapuerca’s prehistoric sites.
Sierra de Atapuerca

5.  Elephant Pit is located between the Gallery and the
entrance of the Railway Trench site:
1_Gran Dolina
2_Gallery
3_Elephant Pit
(Sima del Elefante)
4_Entrance

6. Explanation of the life of the Homids in the
Elephant Pit and its structure.

7.  As the Iberian Peninsula is located between the Atlantic Ocean, the
Mediterranean Sea and Africa, its climate was affected by the
European weather events and African pluviations (periods during
glaciations with higher levels of humidity), generating a wide variety
of environments.
 The landscape around Elephant Pit would consist mainly of a
rainforest, with probably drier open areas and with a distinctly
continental Mediterranean climate similar to the one we can find today
in Burgos.

8.  Elephant Pit was opened more than 1
million years ago and it was refilled
with the material near to its limestone
roof around 120,000 years ago.
 In 1996 its lower levels started being
excavated.
 In 2000 the first samples of human
activity were found there. They found
a small flint flake that shows the
human presence in this site from at
least one million years ago.

9.  In 2001 the excavation of the higher levels started and Atapuerca team
found a big production of stone tools and they also found elephant
remains (bones).
 In 2006 they decided to move the scaffoldings away to have the possibility
of digging in the lower parts of the site.
 Nowadays a new scaffolding system has been built there with two
objectives: continue with the excavation in the low part under the present
road and transform this part of the site into a tourist place.

10.  Flint tools and flakes, some of them dated to 1.5-1.2 million years,
corresponding to Mode 1. Different tools have been found in
superior levels.
 Stone tools discovered at Sima del Elefante include:
1. Mode 3 (designation by JGD Clark, still in use today)
2. Mode 2
3. Oldowan (Mode 1 in Clarke's designation)
Stone tools: Mode 2 and Mode 3

11.  Fauna remains
(elephant bones, deer,
hippos, rhinos, lions,
bobcats, bears, foxes,
rodents, ospreys,
turtles, and tortoises).
 Human remains dated
to at least 1.2 million
years

12.  The most important remain is a jawbone found in
2007 dated to 1.2 million years, which has been
assigned to Homo antecessor.
This human remains are the oldest sample of
hominids in Europe.
In summer 2008 a human phalange was found. It is
the first phalange of the fifth finger of an adult.

13.  http://www.atapuerca.org
 http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_de_Atapuerca
 http://www.atapuerca.tv/atapuerca/yacimiento_elefante
 http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoria_en_la_pen%C3%ADnsula
_ib%C3%A9rica
 http://www.lagranepoca.com/32666-sima-atapuerca-confirman-
presencia-humana-13-millones-anos
 http://www.diariodeatapuerca.net/Simadelelefante.pdf
 http://archaeology.about.com/od/shthroughsiterms/qt/Sima-
Del-Elefante-Spain.htm