More than 7,000 years ago, a girl between the ages of 13 and 14 was buried in the Galería del Fílex, one of the caves that are part of the Sierra de Atapuerca. Her bones, discovered during an excavation in 1979, represent one of the earliest Neolithic human remains found in the region. But they are much more than that.
His is the oldest burial chamber in the Iberian Peninsula, as detailed by researchers from the University of Alcalá in an article published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews. Until now, it was believed that the appearance of Neolithic mortuary traditions in Iberia were not implemented until 1,000 years later.
The first works on the site have already generated great debates. Archaeologists originally believed that the Flint Gallery cave had been occupied during the Bronze Age, around 3,000 years ago. It was around this time that the entrance was sealed, enclosing its occupants inside a "time capsule".
In the last decades around 2,700 human remains have been collected in different cave areas. In addition, numerous hearths and remains of strategically placed torches, more than 6,000 pottery fragments, tools, flint, a polished ax and 341 animal remains (mainly rabbits) were collected.
The most recent excavations even discovered the existence of up to six Neolithic ceramic vessels along with human bones in one of the pits, so the experts decided to reassess the age of the remains discovered 50 years ago.
Radiocarbon dating carried out on four bones belonging to three different individuals revealed that the site had been used as a burial chamber for a period of at least 3,000 years. The oldest remains, those of the 13-year-old girl, known as I-5, are from the Lower Neolithic while the most recent appear to have been buried approximately 3,450 years ago, in the Bronze Age.
Originally, it was thought that the remains found in the part of the cave system known as Sima B were intentionally placed as they were found in a vertical bulge, while the remains found in Sima A were found at the bottom of the cave, which could indicate these individuals fell and died there. But new research has shown that the young woman's bones were found assembled and complete, placed against a wall at the bottom of the abyss with ceramic vessels nearby.
“In addition, the six vessels that were recovered, attributed to the Early Neolithic, are compatible with the date we obtain for I-5. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that the aforementioned vessel fragments were deliberately deposited in Sima A, along with the partial remains of I-5,” the study authors write.
The space, the researchers add, was used as a burial chamber. "The human remains of the Galería del Silex were not found within a domestic context of human occupation of the cave, but within two pits (chasms) located more than three hundred meters from the old entrance," they point out.
"This suggests that the space could have been an area reserved for depositing deceased humans during the Early Neolithic," they add. The other two notable Neolithic sites in the Sierra de Atapuerca, known as El Portalón and El Mirador, were used as dwellings and cattle stables respectively, specializing the use of each cave for different purposes.
Humans used the Flint Gallery for thousands of years. The cave contains up to 53 panels of red and black cave paintings and engravings, thousands of human and animal remains, dozens of remains of stoves and fragments of ceramic vessels.
