Knowledge about the first settlements of Homo sapiens in the interior of the Iberian Peninsula at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic has been significantly advanced with a new study led by Edgar Téllez, a researcher at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH).

The research addresses the subsistence strategies of the first settlers of the Meseta through the taphonomic and zooarchaeological analysis of the faunal remains recovered at the Abrigo de La Malia site (Tamajón, Guadalajara). The findings are published in the journal Quaternary Science Advances.

Analysis of animal remains demonstrates that the site, dated to about 36,000 years ago, was occupied recurrently for at least 10,000 years, in a context of constant climate change. The human groups that visited it mainly hunted deer, wild horses, bison, and chamois, typical resources of forested, mountainous, and grassland environments.

Their occupations were brief in nature, meaning the site was not used as a permanent camp. Instead, their visits were likely related to hunting, provisioning, and the initial processing of animal resources.

Human groups in the region, highly knowledgeable about their environment, were capable of developing effective subsistence strategies, based mainly on hunting and processing medium and large ungulates. These practices allowed them to adapt to the harsh climatic and environmental conditions of the Meseta during the initial Upper Paleolithic.

As the authors point out, although human communities faced complex and even hostile climatic environments, the region offered sufficient resources to ensure their subsistence, and these communities knew how to take advantage of them. Therefore, they question the idea of a population void in the interior of the peninsula and challenge us to rethink the mobility, occupation, and adaptation patterns of the first Homo sapiens in the region.

Phalanx of chamois with cut mark. Credit: Edgar Téllez

A little-explored region

For decades, it was assumed that the Meseta was left almost uninhabited after the disappearance of the Neanderthals and was not resettled until the end of the Last Glacial Period, about 20,000 years ago, with the arrival of the first anatomically modern humans. In contrast, the Mediterranean, Cantabrian, and Atlantic coastal areas concentrated the majority of known deposits and studies on subsistence practices, providing a solid comparative framework.

The new findings in the Meseta, a little-explored region, are especially novel, since they force us to rethink the traditional models of occupation and adaptive strategies of the first Homo sapiens.

Edited by Lisa Lock, reviewed by Robert Egan