TD6.

1
TD6.1 yielded 124 stone tools, but they are badly preserved as the area was also
used by hyenas as a latrine, the urine corroding the area. The layer lacks pebbles
and cores, and 44 of the stone tools are indeterminate. Flakes are much smaller
with an average of 28 mm × 27 mm × 11 mm (1.10 in × 1.06 in × 0.43 in), with ten
measuring below 20 mm (0.79 in), and only three exceeding 60 mm (2.4 in).[9]

They seem to have been using the same methods as the people who manufactured the
TD6.2 tools. They were only retouching larger flakes, the fourteen such tools
averaging 35 mm × 26 mm × 14 mm (1.38 in × 1.02 in × 0.55 in): one marginally
retouched flake, one notch, three spines, seven denticulate sidescrapers, and one
denticulate point.[9]

Fire and palaeoclimate

Only a few charcoal particles have been collected from TD6, which probably
originated from a fire well outside the cave. There is no evidence of any fire use
or burnt bones (cooking) in the occupation sequences of the Gran Dolina. In other
parts of the world, reliable evidence of fire usage does not surface in the
archaeological record until roughly 400,000 years ago.[37] In 2016, small mammal
bones burned in fires exceeding 600 °C (1,112 °F) were identified from 780- to 980-
thousand-year-old deposits at Cueva Negra [es] in southern Spain, which potentially
could have come from a human source as such a high temperature is usually (though
not always) recorded in campfires as opposed to natural bushfires.[38]

H. antecessor may have moved along the Ebro river highlighted above (the Sierra de
Atapuerca lies near the source).[10]
Instead of using fire, these early Europeans probably physiologically withstood the
cold, such as by eating a high protein diet to support a heightened metabolism.[37]
Despite glacial cycles, the climate was probably similar or a few degrees warmer
compared to that of today's, with the coldest average temperature reaching 2 °C (36
°F) sometime in December and January, and the hottest in July and August 18 °C (64
°F). Freezing temperatures could have been reached from November to March, but the
presence of olive and oak suggests subfreezing was an infrequent occurrence.[22]
TE9 similarly indicates a generally warm climate.[6] The Happisburgh footprints
were lain in estuarine mudflats with open forests dominated by pine, spruce, birch,
and in wetter areas alder, with patches of heath and grasslands; the vegetation is
consistent with the cooler beginning or end of an interglacial.[8]

H. antecessor probably migrated from the Mediterranean shore into inland Iberia
when colder glacial periods were transitioning to warmer interglacials, and warm
grasslands dominated, vacating the region at any other time. They may have followed
water bodies while migrating, in the case of Sierra de Atapuerca, most likely the
Ebro River.[10]

Food
The fossils of sixteen animal species were recovered[39] randomly mixed[4] with the
H. antecessor material at the Gran Dolina, including the extinct bush-antlered
deer, the extinct species of fallow deer Dama vallonetensi, the extinct subspecies
of red deer Cervus elaphus acoronatus, the extinct bison Bison voigstedtensi, the
extinct rhino Stephanorhinus etruscus, the extinct horse Equus stenonis, the
extinct fox Vulpes praeglacialis, the extinct bear Ursus dolinensis, the extinct
wolf Canis mosbachensis, the spotted hyena, the wild boar, and undetermined species
of mammoth, monkey, and lynx. Some specimens of the former eight species and the
monkey exhibit cut marks consistent with butchery, with about 13% of all Gran
Dolina remains bearing some evidence of human modification. Deer are the most
commonly butchered animal, with 106 specimens. The inhabitants seem to have carried
carcasses back whole when feasible, and only the limbs and skulls of larger
quarries. This indicates the Gran Dolina H. antecessor were dispatching hunting
parties who killed and hauled back prey to share with the entire group rather than
each individual foraging entirely for themselves, which evinces social cooperation
and division of labour. Less than 5% of all the remains retain animal carnivore
damage, in two instances toothmarks overlapping cutmarks from an unidentified
animal, which could indicate animals were sometimes scavenging H. antecessor
leftovers.[39]

Sierra de Atapuerca today: 1) Entrance to railway ditch, 2) Sima del Elefante, 3)

Galería, 4) Gran Dolina
The Sima del Elefante site records the fallow deer, the bush-antlered deer, rhinos,
E. stenonis, C. mosbachensis, U. dolinensis, the extinct big cat Panthera
gombaszoegensis, the extinct lynx Lynx issiodorensis, the extinct fox Vulpes
alopecoides, several rats, shrews, and rabbits, and undetermined species of
macaques, boar, bison, and beaver. The large mammals are most commonly represented
by long bones, a few of which are cracked open, presumably to access the bone
marrow. Some others bear evidence of percussion and defleshing.[6] They were also
butchering Hermann's tortoise, an easily obtainable source of meat considering how
slowly tortoises move.[40]

The cool and humid montane environment encouraged the growth of olive, mastic,
beech, hazelnut, and chestnut trees, which H. antecessor may have used as food
sources, although they become more common in TD7 and TD8 as the interglacial
progresses and the environment becomes wetter. In the H. antecessor unit TD6,
pollen predominantly derives from juniper and oak. Trees probably grew along rivers
and streams, while the rest of the hills and ridges were dominated by grasses.[22]
The TD6 individuals also seem to have been consuming hackberries, which in
historical times have been used for their medicinal properties more than satiating
hunger because these berries provide very little flesh.[41]

There is no evidence H. antecessor could wield fire and cook, and similarly the
wearing on the molars indicates the more frequent consumption of grittier and more
mechanically challenging foods than later European species, such as raw rather than
cooked meat and underground storage organs.[42]

Cannibalism
Eighty young adult and child H. antecessor specimens from the Gran Dolina exhibit
cut marks and fracturing indicative of cannibalism,[5][39] and H. antecessor is the
second-most common species bearing evidence of butchering.[39] Human bodies were
efficiently utilised, and may be the reason why most bones are smashed or otherwise
badly damaged. There are no complete skulls, elements from the face and back of the
skull are usually percussed, and the muscle attachments on the face and the base of
the skull were cut off. The intense modification of the face was probably to access
the brain. The crown of the head was probably struck, resulting in the impact scars
on the teeth at the gum line. Several skull fragments exhibit peeling.[4]

The ribs also bear cut marks along the muscle attachments consistent with
defleshing, and ATD6-39 has cuts along the length of the rib, which may be related
to disembowelment. The nape muscles were sliced off, and the head and neck were
probably detached from the body. The vertebrae were often cut, peeled, and
percussed. The muscles on all of the clavicles were sawed off to disconnect the
shoulder. One radius, ATD6-43, was cut up and peeled. The femur was shattered,
probably to extract the bone marrow. The hands and feet variably exhibit
percussion, cutting, or peeling, likely a result of dismemberment.[4]

In sum, mainly the meatier areas were prepared, and the rest discarded. This
suggests they were butchering humans for nutritional purposes, but the face
generally exhibits significantly more cutmarks than the faces of animals. When this
is seen in prehistoric modern human specimens, it is typically interpreted as
evidence of exocannibalism, a form of ritual cannibalism where one eats someone
from beyond their social group, such as an enemy from a neighbouring tribe. But,
when overviewing the evidence of H. antecessor cannibalism in 1999, Spanish
palaeontologist Yolanda Fernandez-Jalvo and colleagues instead ascribed the
relative abundance of facial cut marks in the H. antecessor sample to the strongly
contrasting structure of the muscle attachments between humans and typical animal
prey items (that is, defleshing the human face simply required more cuts, or the
butcherers were less familiar with defleshing humans).[4]

Nonetheless, the assemblage had a lack of older individuals, composed entirely of

young adults and juveniles. In 2010 Carbonell hypothesised that they were
practising exocannibalism and hunting down neighbouring tribesmen.[43] In 2019
Spanish palaeoanthropologist Jesús Rodríguez and colleagues argued the demographics
can more be better explained as the consumption of fellow tribesmen who had already
died from natural causes, simply as to not let valuable food go to waste,
especially considering the high youth mortality rates in modern hunter-gatherer
groups.[44]