A thesis that was launched in the 1960s by one of the pioneers of Romanian prehistoric archaeology, Constantin S. Nicolăescu-Plopșor, which spoke of the presence of homini about 2 million years old on Romanian territory, has not only returned to the forefront after it seemed to have fallen into disuse, but has also been confirmed by an international team of researchers in a study recently published in the journal Nature Communications.
Specialists from research centers in Romania, the USA, Great Britain, Australia, Sweden and the Republic of Moldova have reanalyzed the faunal elements discovered during archaeological excavations that took place in the early 1960s at the site at Valea lui Grăunceanu – Bugiulești, Vâlcea County, and dated them using the uranium-lead method, one of the most efficient radiometric dating methods used for objects older than a million years.
The same methods were used in the case of animal fossil remains unearthed in several sites near the one at Valea lui Grăunceanu, and which archaeologists considered contemporary or relatively contemporary with it (La Pietriș, Valea Roșcai, Dealul Mijlociu or Fântâna lui Mitilan).
No fewer than 4,524 of the 4,983 fossil elements were analyzed using high-resolution microscopes to identify any artificial changes that had occurred on their surfaces. The results indicated that 20 of these had incisions that, in at least eight of them, were clearly artificial. The fact that the incisions appear in anatomical positions that indicate disembowelment, the study authors argue, betrays an operation to deliberately remove soft tissue from the bones, implicitly of a homini species capable of using tools for this purpose.
“The incisions have not been observed until now, although the faunal elements have been discovered for almost 60 years, for the simple fact that specialists in those early years of prehistoric archaeology in Romania either did not pay attention to this aspect or did not notice them. The emphasis was then on the presence of possible tools created from bone, a hypothesis that was later dismantled, based on the detailed analysis of the elements in question. In fact, then, in the early 90s, the hypothesis of the hominin presence in Valea lui Grăunceanu began to fall into disuse”, Adrian Doboș, archaeologist at the “Vasile Pârvan” Institute of Archaeology, specialist in the Lower Paleolithic period and one of the authors of the study published in the journal Nature told Hotnews.ro.
The dating indicated an average age of at least 1.95 million years for the fossils, possibly even over 2 million years, which makes the site at Valea lui Grăunceanu the oldest European site where traces of homini activity appear.
“Given that the fossil record from that period is extremely poor in Eurasia, it is difficult to pronounce on the species of hominins that left such traces on the territory of Romania. Most likely, we are talking about individuals of the Homo erectus species or their evolutionary precursors. However, in the absence of fossil remains that would give us clues about them, everything remains at the level of supposition”, added Adrian Doboș.
It is certain, however, that the environment in which such individuals lived or migrated was one specific to the forest-steppe, a fact supported both by the specific fauna (ancestors of giraffes, beavers, porcupines, cervids, an extinct species of primate – Paradolichopitechus, bovids, ostriches or the oldest representative of the pangolin family in Europe) as well as by pollen studies that indicated a flora specific to such an environment.
Currently, the oldest European sites that have yielded human fossils are those at Barracon Leon, Spain (1.5 million years old), Kocabaş, Turkey (1.3-1.1 million years old) and Sima del Elefante, Spain (1.2-1.1 million years old).