An updated review of sites bearing hominin remains and/or tools from Europe, including recent findings from the Balkans, still indicates that the only compelling evidence of main hominin presence in these regions was only since ∼0.9 million years ago (Ma), bracketed by the end of the Jaramillo geomagnetic polarity subchron (0.99 Ma) and the Brunhes-Matuyama polarity chron boundary (0.78 Ma). This time window straddled the late Early Pleistocene climate transition (EPT) at the onset of enhanced glacial/interglacial activity that reverberated worldwide. Europe may have become initially populated during the EPT when, possibly for the first time in the Pleistocene, vast and exploitable ecosystems were generated along the eustatically emergent Po-Danube terrestrial conduit. These newly formed settings, characterized by stable terrestrial lowlands with open grasslands and reduced woody cover especially during glacial/interglacial transitions, are regarded as optimal ecosystems for several large Galerian immigrant mammals such as African and Asian megaherbivores, possibly linked with hominins in a common food web, to expand into en route to Europe. The question of when hominins first arrived in Europe thus places the issue in the context of changes in climate, paleogeography and faunal associations as potential environmental drivers and controlling agents in a specific time frame, a key feature of the Galerian migration hypothesis.
Josep Pares: New views on an old site: Atapuerca (N Spain).
A number of key findings at the Lower Palaeolithic cave sites of Atapuerca, northern Spain, have led to major advancements in our knowledge of human evolution and occupation of Eurasia. Since the nineties, when the first hominin remains were reported, the sites have produced thousands of fossils and artifacts and have become a landmark in studies on Pleistocene human evolution. A variety of chronological methods including paleomagnetism, electron spin resonance, luminescence among other, have been key to place the Atapuerca sites in the context of the first migrations and settlement outside the African continent.