Ancient Relatives in Northern Spain

Book Museum in Burgos, Castile and Leon, Spain.
Our travels in Northern Spain took us beyond the world of books.

When Karen Snyder invited me to join her in an exploration of Spain, I suggested the northern region because I had longed to see the cave art at Altamira. I saw this as an opportunity to visit my ancient paternal ancestors. The path out of Africa taken by my paternal ancestors was east across the south end of the Red Sea into the Arabian peninsula, north into the Ancient Near East, and then west along the northern edge of the Mediterranean Sea to the Iberian peninsula where they hung out during one of the recurring ice ages. In 2014 I had learned during a visit to Etruscan ruins in Tuscany that my ancestors were an earthy people. I was eager to see who they were by the time they had reached Spain. 

Karen and me on site at the archeological digs on the Sierra of Atapuerca.

There are some thoughts and feelings that one can only have in situ. All the books and photographs perused before a journey set you up but it is not until you are on site that random thoughts and ideas begin to coalesce into bigger ideas and possible insights. I arrived at some hypotheses during our visits to the Altamira Museum outside the medieval village of Santillana del Mar, the Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos, and the archeological digs in the Sierra de Atapuerca. Books we collected on site also pushed my thinking.

Altamira Cave - large Bison

Altamira Museum - Who Are We?

My first hypothesis occurred in the replica cave of the Altamira Museum. I was most impacted by the ceiling paintings in the Polychrome Chamber. The animals painted there were not the ones Homo sapiens hunted. The time during which these paintings were made was the beginning of the Holocene. During the warming of the climate then Bison and Roe Deer were leaving northern Spain and going further north where it was colder. Homo sapiens on the other hand preferred the warmer weather and, having domesticated some animals, were moving toward a more sedentary lifestyle. I believe the cave art at Altamira represents the awareness of Homo sapiens that something of significance was occurring. Whether they wished to commune with the bison and deer to better understand what was occurring or wanted to use this art to help fellow homo sapiens understand the changes occurring, this art dramatizes the end of an era.

Altamira Cave - Large hind / Roe Deer 

Viewers of cave art are often puzzled by the many depictions of human hands. My second hypothesis involving this repeated painting of human hands came to me later at the Human Evolution Museum in Burgos. There I saw a presentation on the difference between the hands of chimpanzees, a common primate ancestor with hominids, and Homo Sapiens. The grip in Chimps is in their four fingers because their thumb is directly opposite those fingers. When our ancestors left the trees and began walking on the earth, the thumb evolved to be closer to the index finger, allowing for a grip between the thumb and index finger. This allowed for greater precision in the making of tools. Their better technology gave Homo Sapiens an advantage over other animal species. 

Thumb and index finger brought increased dexterity.

In upper left corner - Handprint  - Altamira Cave

Our hominid ancestors were masters of observation. It seems to me that cave artists who painted hands were at some level attempting to say, “This is what makes us different than other animals. We do not have hooves or paws. Our hands are what has given us our refined technology and hold a key to our future.” Perhaps, as some have suggested, the hands were an expression of “I was here; we were here."Or "I am the one (we are the ones) who made this picture”. But even if that is the case, it seems to me to be significant that these artists would choose as a symbol of human presence precisely the characteristic that distinguished them from other animals.

Atepuerca - How Did We Become Human?

Located not far from a UNESCO heritage site cathedral, the museum is a
modern architectural counterpart to the tall spires of the Gothic cathedral.

An enormous chart on the back of a wall divider gave a small sense
of the huge expanse of time during which evolution led to Homo sapiens.

From the province of Cantabria, we traveled three hours by bus southeast to Burgos in the province of Castile & Leon. Ongoing excavations over the past fifty years at the Sierra de Atapuerca outside the city of Burgos have produced 83% of all bones showing the evolution of hominids into Homo sapiens. With the construction of the Museo de la Evolution Humana, Burgos became the world capital for human evolution. Adjacent buildings allow for ongoing conferences and dialogues about the evolving knowledge base on evolution. There will be more finds made in other parts of the world that will alter and refine the current story of evolution, but for now the museum in Burgos is the keeper of the human story.

Basic structure of the brain.

I arrived at a third hypothesis after viewing depictions of and text on the human brain at the Human Evolution Museum.  These experiences gave me a different understanding of what may have occurred between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens. Since most of the nutrients we ingest go to feed the brain, the difference in body size between these two hominids could have made a big difference.  Hominids left Africa much earlier than Homo Sapiens and evolved into Neanderthals. In order to exist in the colder climate of northern Eurasia, these hominids developed a larger body frame that would have required more nutrients than the smaller hominids who remained in the warmer climate of Africa. Thus, more of the nutrients absorbed by those remaining in Africa could go toward the development of the brain. Although the size of the two brains was about the same, that of Homo Sapiens evidently became more complex.

Who Will We Become?

Constants of human evolution: climate and ecological changes, biological responses,
cultural responses (technological development), migration to new habitats,
cultural + biological integration processes, and socialization of innovations.

Another factor in the question of why Homo Sapiens had replaced Neanderthals in Eurasia within a period of 12,000 years could have been the population advantage that Homo Sapiens had over Neanderthals. Our hominid ancestors could have only one child at a time and that child had to be nurtured by its mother from birth to maturity. Within Homo Sapiens, living in the warmer climate of Africa, a pattern of maturation within community (childhood) developed. After birthing a child, the mother needed to nurture it for a shorter time period before it could continue developing by learning from other community members, allowing her to have another child. As Homo Sapiens expanded in population their species size outstripped that of Neanderthals.

Today, however, what was once an advantage has become a threat to both Homo Sapiens and planet earth. Our accelerated population growth is outstripping the resources needed to sustain people on Mother Earth. What responses will we make?

Sign for Camino (Santiago de Compostela) in village of Atepuerca.
The human footprint on planet earth has been enormous.