The cold of the last ice age could not overcome them. Not even the deadly temperatures of the most mountainous areas of the Iberian Peninsula, in fact, managed to prevent our ancestors from occupying them regularly and founding prosperous communities there between 21,000 and 15,000 years ago, in the Upper Paleolithic. Something that until now was not believed to be possible but that has just been demonstrated by a study recently published in PLOS ONE by a dozen Spanish researchers, including Manuel Alcaraz-Castaño, from the University of Alcalá, and Javier Aragoncillo-del Rió, from the Molina-Alto Tajo UNESCO World Geopark. Until now, as explained in the introduction of the article, research on the ancient hunter-gatherer populations of the Iberian Peninsula had focused mainly on the coastal regions, so "knowledge of the human settlement of the entire Iberian interior continues being scarce for the Last Glacial. In fact, it was thought that the cold and dry conditions of the interior of the peninsula would have been too harsh at that time for these human populations to inhabit them. But this study shows that this was not the case. Related News standard No The DNA of a man from 23,000 years ago suggests that the Iberian Peninsula was an isolated refuge in the Ice Age Judith de Jorge Two investigations complete the history of human populations in Europe Researchers, in fact, have presented numerous evidence of human occupation of the Iberian Peninsula at high altitude in the Upper Paleolithic. Specifically, the evidence comes from a place called 'Charco Verde II', in the province of Guadalajara and more than 1,000 meters above sea level. A region that, as can be read in the study, "faces one of the harshest climates on the Iberian Peninsula." Despite which it was occupied "during some of the coldest and most arid phases of the Last Glacial." Some of the tools found by researchers at the Aragoncillo-del Río et al. site, 2023, PLOS ONE The abundance of tools and ornaments there has revealed a sequence of recurring human occupations between 21,000 and 15,000 years ago, a period of time that It includes one of the coldest and harshest periods of the last ice age. The find, therefore, directly challenges the idea that Upper Paleolithic humans avoided the interior of the Iberian Peninsula due to its harsh climate and instead shows that the interior hosted complex and relatively dense settlements even during the most arid and cold. MORE INFORMATION news No Nobel Prize in Physics 2023 for light tools that allow us to see in real time what happens inside atoms news Yes Anne L'Huillier, Nobel Prize in Physics 2023: «We have more important problems, such as climate change "These findings add to the growing evidence of Middle and Upper Paleolithic occupations throughout this region, indicating that the historical lack of evidence of hunter-gatherer sites in the interior of Iberia is not a reflection exact description of prehistoric human distributions, but rather the result of research, which until now has prioritized the study of coastal regions and neglected those in the interior.
