Archaeologists discovered a large, well-preserved vessel from the early Bronze Age during an excavation in Toledo, Spain. The vessel was found buried 25cm underground in the position it was placed in 4,000 years ago. In the same excavation, archaeologists also uncovered smaller kitchen items from the period. Separately, during the 2014 excavation season at the Atapuerca archaeological site, the team discovered numerous hominid fossils over 500,000 years old that may belong to an ancestor of Neanderthals. Researchers also identified the first abstract engraving intentionally carved by Neanderthals, found on the floor of a cave in Gibraltar consisting of crossed and parallel lines.

1. Most recent discoveries
about Prehistory in the
Iberian Península
By Gema Ortiz de la Guía
2ºBachE

2. Discovery of a vessel in Toledo
A group of archaeologists have found
a big and well preserved vessel from
the beginning of the Bronze Age
(3300 BC- 1200 BC) in an excavation
in Toledo (the sites from the
beginning of the Bronze Age are not
very common in Toledo).
It has been found in the same place it
was placed four thousand years ago,
with the purpose of using it like a
container.

3. Archaeologists Juan Manuel Rojas, Alejandro Vicente and their team found that
vessel. The piece was buried at a depth of 25cm from the surface. It was standing
and full of soil that the archaeologists have saved to find remains of seeds and
pollen.
The vessel is around 75cm high and 1.5 cm thick It doesn’t have low part, so water
could seep into the earth and in that way the product that was stored in the vessel
wasn’t damaged.
Juan Manuel de Rojas

4. In the same excavation archaeologist found other smaller objects, like a
cooking pot and a stewpot, kitchenware of that period.
Nowadays the vessel has been taken into the Centre of Restoration and
Conservation of Castilla La Mancha to clean it, and after that it would be taken
into the Museum of Santa Cruz.

5. Summer 2014 Atapuerca Campaign
In the last campaign in 2014, Arsuaga
and his team have found some human
remains in the Bones Pit, and they
seem to be from hominids.
These sediments have been dripping
from the bottom of the pit, a deep
subsidence of 14m. These remains
fossilized more than half million years
ago. With exquisite care, each
fragment of bone has been removed.

6. Only in 2014 the team has retired near to
two hundred hominid fossils belonging to
ribs, vertebrae, parts of the skull and
bones of the hands and feet.
In the campaign this year they have
found the double of human remains with
respect to the rest found in other sites
around the world.
These skulls have been remade piece by
piece, some of them collected for over
twenty years.

7. We could consider them as
Neanderthals’ grandparents. They could
be Homo heidelbergensis.
Those hominids lived in a warmer latter
period, but those previous circumstances
so hard conditioned their evolution. They
look like Neanderthals, with teeth
(particularly the front ones) and robust
jaws, nose projected forward, the familiar
ring above the eyes, lack of chin, but with
smaller brains.
Nowadays they’re investigating and
analyzing the land and new things that
they have discovered

8. Discoveries about the Neanderthals
in Gorham’s Cave
A cave from Gibraltar has the first abstract design
done intentionally by Neanderthals that has been
found until today.
It is a simple small size engraving carved on the
rock, about 300cm2: several cross and parallel lines
at right angles drawn on the floor of a cave that was
inhabited by Neanderthals, an extinct species of
hominid that coexisted with the Homo sapiens.
In the past paleoanthropologists found fossil remains
from hominids and manufactured instruments.

9. The strokes of Gorham’s Cave would show
that the ability for the symbolic thinking
was not limited to Homo sapiens. "It was
an intentional and symbolic engraving, but
we will never understand its meaning,"
explains John Joseph Black, an ecologist
at Doñana’s Biological Station (CSIC) and
coauthor of the study.
Experts are convinced of this because they
have ruled out the possibility that the
marks, which are around six millimetres
deep, were made by accident, for example,
while cutting meat or leather with stone
tools.

10. Sources
http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/08/20/eps/1408535436_570793.html
http://www.abc.es/toledo/ciudad/20140914/abci-hallan-vasija-edad-bronce-201409142037.html
http://www.elmundo.es/ciencia/2014/09/01/5404ad8de2704e490f8b458e.html