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oai:riubu.ubu.es:10259/104472025-05-10T00:05:09Zcom_10259_9737com_10259_5086com_10259_2604col_10259_10448

2025-05-09T07:02:49Z urn:hdl:10259/10447 Discontinuity of Human Presence at Atapuerca during the Early Middle Pleistocene: A Matter of Ecological Competition? Rodríguez Gómez, Guillermo Mateos, Ana Martín González, Jesús Ángel Blasco, Ruth Rosell, Jordi Rodríguez, Jesús Increasing evidence suggests that the European human settlement is older than 1.2 Ma. However, there is a fierce debate about the continuity or discontinuity of the early human settlement of Europe. In particular, evidence of human presence in the interval 0.7−0.5 Ma is scarce in comparison with evidence for the previous and later periods. Here, we present a case study in which the environmental conditions at Sierra de Atapuerca in the early Middle Pleistocene, a period without evidence of human presence, are compared with the conditions in the previous period, for which a relatively intense human occupation is documented. With this objective in mind, the available resources for a human population and the intensity of competition between secondary consumers during the two periods are compared using a mathematical model. The Gran Dolina site TD8 level, dated to 0.7−0.6 Ma, is taken as representative of the period during which Atapuerca was apparently not occupied by humans. Conditions at TD8 are compared with those of the previous period, represented by the TD6-2 level, which has yielded abundant evidence of intense human occupation. The results show that survival opportunities for a hypothetical human population were lower at TD8 than they were at TD6-2. Increased resource competition between secondary consumers arises as a possible explanation for the absence of human occupation at Atapuerca in the early Middle Pleistocene. 2025-05-09T07:02:49Z 2025-05-09T07:02:49Z 2014-07 info:eu-repo/semantics/article http://hdl.handle.net/10259/10447 10.1371/journal.pone.0101938 1932-6203 eng Plos One. 2014, V. 9, n. 7, p. e101938 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0101938 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 4.0 Internacional Public Library of Science