Episode 45: Detective of the Dead
Origin Stories
Meredith Johnson
4.8 • 554 Ratings
🗓️ 28 August 2020
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Atapuerca is a place that holds the mystery of human evolution in Europe from 1.2 million years ago through recent times. You can find, in one place, the oldest human in Europe, the first murder in the archaeological record, and fossils that tell a range of stories from disturbing and grisly to tender and heartwarming. María Martinón-Torres is a Leakey Foundation grantee who is sometimes called a "detective of the dead" because she pieces together clues to learn about the lives and deaths of the people who once inhabited northern Spain.
Special thanks
Thanks to María Martinón-Torres for sharing her work. Thanks to Dub and Ginny Crook for sponsoring this episode.
Links to learn more
The Atapuerca website
María Martinón-Torres' website
Learn about Atapuerca on efossils.org
Unesco World Heritage information
Sima del Elefante - The First Hominin of Europe
Gran Dolina - Human Meat Just Another Meal for Early Europeans?
Sima de los Huesos
The Leakey Foundation
Origin Stories is a project of The Leakey Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding human origins research and outreach.
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Lunch Break Science
Lunch Break Science is The Leakey Foundation's online series featuring short talks and interviews with Leakey Foundation grantees. Episodes resume in October but you can watch all of the past episodes on demand at leakeyfoundation.org/live.
Credits
Host, Writer, Producer: Meredith Johnson
Producer: Lucia Benavides
Editor: Audrey Quinn
Special thanks to Shuka Kalantari
Theme Music: Henry Nagle
Additional Music:
Lee Rosevere "Tech Toys" and music from Blue Dot Sessions.
Sponsors
Origin Stories is made possible by support from Dub and Virginia Crook, Diana McSherry, Jeanne Newman, Camilla Smith, and donors like you!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Origin Stories, the Leaky Foundation podcast. |
| 0:10.0 | I'm Meredith Johnson. |
| 0:14.0 | On the last episode, we traveled to Ethiopia. |
| 0:17.0 | Today we're taking another trip, this time to northern Spain, to a place called Adapuerca, |
| 0:24.4 | a place that can tell the entire story of human evolution in Europe, |
| 0:28.7 | with a complete cast of characters and twists and turns that are more dramatic and mysterious |
| 0:34.2 | than an Agatha Christie novel. |
| 0:38.6 | Before we get into it, a content note, |
| 0:41.7 | this episode contains descriptions of prehistoric violence, |
| 0:45.4 | including cannibalism. |
| 0:48.7 | Atapurca, it's a unique place |
| 0:50.9 | because when we are talking about Atapurca, |
| 0:52.7 | we are not talking about only one side. Indeed, we are talking about Atapurca, we are not talking about only one side. |
| 0:54.9 | Indeed, we are talking about a hill that hides the mystery of all the hominine species |
| 1:01.7 | that inhabited Europe from the last 1.2 million years to present times. So it's not only one |
| 1:07.7 | side. It's not only a one hominine species. We are talking about several localities that are providing us |
| 1:13.5 | the biological evidence, the cultural evidence, the fauna, |
| 1:17.5 | the landscape of the hominins that inhabited for such a long period in the European continent. |
| 1:23.8 | This is Leakey Foundation grantee Maria Martineau-Torres. |
| 1:34.3 | She's a paleoanthropologist who's been a member of the Ata Puerca research team since 1998. And she's director of the National Research Center on Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain, |
| 1:39.3 | just 15 kilometers away from the fossil sites of Ataburca. |
| 1:45.0 | She says this collection of sites is a magic place, like a book that holds the entirety of |
... |
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