Orce
Encyclopedia
Orce is a municipality located in the province of Granada
, in southeastern Spain
. According to the 2009 census
(INE
), the city has a population of 1333 inhabitants.
has led an excavation team there. He asserts that the sites have Oldowan-style stone tools dating between 1.5 and 1.8 million years ago. If the early estimates are supported, these would represent the oldest stone tool finds in Europe. Other scholars prefer a more conservative date for the stone tools of 1.2 million years. Together with the hominid remains at the Atapuerca Mountains, the tools are evidence that human ancestors settled in western Europe much earlier than scholars had thought, perhaps by 400,000 years or more.
Granada (province)
Granada is a province of southern Spain, in the eastern part of the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is bordered by the provinces of Albacete, Murcia, Almería, Jaén, Córdoba, Málaga, and the Mediterranean Sea . Its capital city is also called Granada.The province covers an area of 12,635 km²...
, in southeastern Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
. According to the 2009 census
Census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...
(INE
Instituto Nacional de Estadística (Spain)
The National Institute of Statistics is the official organisation in Spain that collects statistics about demography, economy, and Spanish society. Every 10 years, this organisation conducts a national census. The last census took place in 2001....
), the city has a population of 1333 inhabitants.
Significance in Paleoanthropology
Orce is the location of the paleo-archaeological sites known as Barranco Leon, Venta Micena, and Fuentenueva 3, near the basin of an ancient lake where fossils have been preserved in sediment. Josep Gilbert of the M. Crusafont Institute in BarcelonaBarcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
has led an excavation team there. He asserts that the sites have Oldowan-style stone tools dating between 1.5 and 1.8 million years ago. If the early estimates are supported, these would represent the oldest stone tool finds in Europe. Other scholars prefer a more conservative date for the stone tools of 1.2 million years. Together with the hominid remains at the Atapuerca Mountains, the tools are evidence that human ancestors settled in western Europe much earlier than scholars had thought, perhaps by 400,000 years or more.