Hominins and Proboscideans in the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic in the Central Iberian Peninsula

Abstract

Since the middle of the 19th Century, when the first elephant remains were excavated near Madrid (Spain), continuous discoveries of proboscideans have taken place on the riverbanks of the middle and lower courses of the Manzanares and Jarama rivers. The pioneering research carried out by Aguilera y Gamboa in Torralba and Ambrona (Soria, Spain) in the early 20th Century was followed decades later by Howell and others. These various studies have ensured that the Iberian Peninsula is central to the debate over the human exploitation of proboscideans during the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic in Europe. An updated revision of the relationship between hominins and proboscideans in the interior of the Iberian Peninsula, specifically in the area located along the valleys of the Manzanares and Jarama rivers, has been carried out by the authors and is presented in this paper. European sites which show evidence of proboscidean exploitation are substantially greater in number during the Lower Palaeolithic than during the Middle Palaeolithic. In the Manzanares and Jarama valleys, a substantial number of sites with Acheulean lithic industry associated with elephant remains have been recorded, although plenty of evidence dating to the Middle Palaeolithic has also been found. This implies that Mousterian groups made use of these animal resources in a similar way to the Acheulean groups, and that there were no substantial changes to their subsistence strategies in relation to these mammals. Therefore, the exploitation of mega-mammals for food was a recurrent phenomenon during the Acheulean and Middle Palaeolithic in the interior of the Iberian Peninsula.