Orce is a municipality located in the

province of Granada 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 (along the Costa Tropical). ...

, in southeastern

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

. According to the 2009

census A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses incl ...

(

INE INE, Ine or ine may refer to: Institutions * Institut für Nukleare Entsorgung, a German nuclear research center * Instituto Nacional de Estadística (disambiguation) * Instituto Nacional de Estatística (disambiguation) * Instituto Nacional Elec ...

), the city has a population of 1333 inhabitants.

Paleoanthropology

Orce is the location of the paleo-

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

sites known as

Barranco León Barranco León is an archaeological site with an age range between 1.2 and 1.4 million of years. It was found "Niño de Orce", which was the ancient archaeological record in Western Europe with 1.4 million years in the Pleistocene, and it consist ...

, Venta Micena, and Fuente Nueva 3, near the basin of an ancient lake where fossils have been preserved in sediment. Josep Gibert of the M. Crusafont Institute in

Sabadell Sabadell () is a city in Catalonia, Spain. It is in the south of the ''comarca'' of Vallès Occidental and its joint capital (co-capital), on the River Ripoll, north of Barcelona. Sabadell is located above sea level. Sabadell pioneered the Ind ...

has led an excavation team there. He asserts that the sites have

Oldowan The Oldowan (or Mode I) was a widespread stone tool archaeological industry (style) in prehistory. These early tools were simple, usually made with one or a few flakes chipped off with another stone. Oldowan tools were used during the Lower ...

-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 The Hominidae (), whose members are known as the great apes or hominids (), are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: '' Pongo'' (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); ''Gorilla'' (the east ...

remains at the

Atapuerca Mountains The Atapuerca Mountains ( es, Sierra de Atapuerca) is a karstic hill formation near the village of Atapuerca in the province of Burgos (autonomous community of Castile and Leon), northern Spain. In a still ongoing excavation campaign, rich fos ...

, the tools are evidence that human ancestors settled in western Europe more than one million years (Ma) ago. Recent numerical dating studies using

Electron Spin Resonance Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) or electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy is a method for studying materials that have unpaired electrons. The basic concepts of EPR are analogous to those of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), but the spi ...

(ESR) method applied to fossil teeth and quartz grains have provided ages of ca. 1.2 Ma for Fuente Nueva 3, and ca. 1.4 Ma for Barranco León and Venta Micena.

References

External links

Official site of the Village of Orce
Municipalities in the Province of Granada {{Granada-geo-stub