You find your seat in the grandstands and sit down. In front of you is a big circle of yellow sand, surrounded by a red fence.

Horns blow, a gate opens, and the toreros (bullfighters) come out into the ring. Band music starts up.

The Parade (paseillo)

All the toreros walk together across the ring in a little parade, along with the horses and mules that will take part in the fight.  They bow to the president (presiding authority) who sits in the box of honor; then they get behind the fence.

The Bull Appears

Silence. Suddenly a gate opens in the fence and the bull comes running into the ring, its head high. It charges anything it sees moving, man or cape. Bullfighters (subordinates) wave a big cape at it to make it come their way, then they get behind the fence before it reaches them.

Now the main bullfighter steps into the ring and stands firm while the bull charges him. It looks like the bull will get him. But he holds out a big cape and the bull barges right through it, galloping past, just inches away from him. The crowd cheers, maybe they already shout “Olé!”

The bull turns around and comes back.  The torero again stands still and receives the charge, holding open the big pink cape. Again the bull drives right by him through the cape. This will happen several more times and then a trumpet blows and the torero gets back behind the fence, leaving the bull alone in the ring.

The Picadors

Out into the ring come men (picadores) mounted on big horses.  They look a little like heavy-set Don Quijotes because they wear some armor and hold a lance.

The horses (there are two) wear a long padded skirt for protection. The bull charges one of them and while it is trying to gore the horse, the picador on top drives his lance into the bull’s shoulder muscles. The lance has a pin to keep it from penetrating more than a couple of inches.

Two or three times the bull charges a horse and gets lanced. Then a trumpet blows and the horses walk out of the ring.

The Banderilleros

Now it is the turn of the banderilleros, bullfighters who put in banderillas—decorated sticks or harpoons. Holding these in both hands, they provoke a charge and when the bull arrives they avoid his horns by deftly stepping aside and at the same time they drive the two sticks into its shoulder muscles.

Three times they do this, so the bull has six banderillas hanging from his shoulders (if none fall out). Then they leave the ring.

The Bullfighter Alone with the Bull

Now comes the final part: the close passes and the killing of the bull. The head torero comes out holding a smaller cape and a sword. Alone with the bull and working very close, he provokes charge after charge. The danger is evident.

The horns just miss his body as the bull drives through the cape. The torero’s  way of effecting these passes, his grace and timing, make this final part of the fight the most tense and exciting.

The Kill

Finally, he raises his sword and, running directly at the bull,  drives it between its shoulder blades.

If the sword is well-placed, the bull will die immediately. Sometimes the bullfighter needs more tries before it falls down dead.

The Applause

That is all. If the crowd likes the torero’s work they will wave handkerchiefs to ask the president to give him one of the bull’s ears as a prize. The torero walks around the ring, receiving the ovation of the spectators.  The dead bull is dragged out of the ring by a team of mules.

Six bulls will be fought and killed in the same way during a bullfight—two for each of the three  star toreros.

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Nowadays with a gasoline motor and a pump we can do about anything.
But in the old days, and not so old days, there were no gasoline motors.
Inventors tried to come up with some other way, for example, to lift water up to a castle from a river down in the valley. A way that would use the current of the river to push the water up the hill.

The Italian inventor Gianello Torriano found one and became justly famous for it. In about 1565 he brought water to the Royal Alcázar of Toledo, 100 meters above the Tagus River.

The castle (Alcázar) of Toledo (top right), with the Tagus River below

It is on record that he did it; but the device was long ago destroyed and has to be re-constructed from guesses. The most widely accepted design is the one proposed by Ladislao Reti, based on fragments of contemporary descriptions:

“A large water wheel powered a revolving belt with buckets or amphora that transported water to the top of a tower. When the buckets reached the top of the tower they would upend pouring the water into a small tank from where it would travel down to a smaller tower via a pipe. A second water wheel provided mechanical power to pumps that drove a series of cups mounted on arms inside the second tower. The arms of the cups were hollow with an opening at the end which allowed water to run down inside the arm and out of the opposite end. A see-sawing motion of the arms lifted the water to successive levels in the cups. Once the final level was reached the water flowed down a second pipe to a third tower which contained further cups on arms and was also activated by the mechanical power derived from the second water wheel. This final tower raised the water high enough to allow it to flow into the storage tanks at the Alcázar.” (Wikipedia)

By 1568 the machine was delivering around 14,100 liters a day to the Alcázar and the entire city above.

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What is this? Who is that burly guy and why is he carrying an old man?

The burly guy is Aeneas, the legendary founder of Rome; and he’s caring his dad, Anchises. They are getting out of Troy, their home, as fast as they can because the city is on fire.
The little boy is Aeneas’ son, Ascanius.

What’s the old man carrying?

Those are the penates, the home-gods that watch over you. Every household had some in a niche in the hall. They were what you grabbed to take with you when you could take only one thing. They would protect you and your family.

Who made the statue?

Gian Lorenzo Bernini. He carved it in 1619, when he was only twenty. It is in the Galleria Borghese, Rome.

But what is the story?

It is a side-story in the Trojan War legend, the subject of the Illiad, Homer’s great epic poem. The Greeks all knew this and many other stories from that idealized history of their country. The Greek version of this one ended with the flight of Aeneas, a prince of Troy, and his family.

Aeneas and his father as depicted on a Greek vase

When Rome was inventing its own history years later and looking for a founder, it took up this Aeneas thread. Roman historians thought they couldn’t do better than the old Greek legends. Monkeying the story of Ulysses, who after the Trojan War was kept wandering around the world because of the curse of an angry god, they said Aeneas and his family were made to wander around the Mediterranean after leaving Troy because of the curse of an angry goddess. The hero was not able to settle down until, after years, he reached Latium, the place that would become Rome. Anchises died along the way. Aeneas’s wife did too. Eventually Aeneas became king of the Latins and married a local princess.

Aeneas’ flight from Troy with his father on his shoulders was always a hard one to depict with grace. Here is Raphael’s version.

Aeneas is carrying the old man fireman-style and really struggling with the weight.

Barocci’s painting is wonderful illustration of the whole scene:

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One morning a hunter brought a snow-white fawn into camp and presented it to Sertorius.

Sertorius smiled to see such a beautiful and curious animal. He was happy for a gift like that from the Lusitani. He needed all the support he could get.

He had it tied to his tent. In time it became tame and gentle and he let it follow him around camp. It obeyed his orders—it came when he called and walked off when he told it to leave. Somehow it didn’t mind all the uproar of camp, all the thousands of soldiers. It listened only to Sertorius.

He was astute. Not for nothing was he known as the Roman Hannibal. Probably already as soon as the white deer began following him around he had the idea to say it came from heaven, from the goddess Diana, and that it talked to him and revealed her secrets. The Lusitani were all superstitious—it was easy to get them to believe a story like that.

Whenever he received secret information, he said the deer had whispered it to him. If news came to him that the enemy had made an incursion into his territory he told his men to arm themselves, that the doe had warned him in a dream of an imminent attack. When he heard of or suspected some mutiny or treachery among his soldiers, he said the fawn told him to be on the lookout. And when news reached him of the victory of one of his generals, he hushed the messenger and brought out the doe all covered in garlands. “Good news,” he announced to his soldiers. “Blessed news. Let us offer sacrifice to the gods because good fortune has come our way. I’ve been told.” And he turned to the fawn, who looked back at him with great, loving eyes.

“By these devices,” says Plutarch, “he made the people tractable, and so found them more serviceable for all his plans; they believed that they were led, not by the mortal wisdom of a foreigner, but by a god.”

Meanwhile, everything began to go well for Sertorius and his army of Lusitani barbarians. His power grew and grew. He had started out with only a handful of real Roman soldiers and a motley band of Libyans from Africa. In Lusitania (modern Portugal) he picked up four thousand targeteers and a few hundred horsemen. That was all—that was his army.
With that he waged war against four Roman generals and one hundred and twenty thousand foot-soldiers, six thousand horsemen, and two thousand archers and slingers. Most of the cities in Spain were hostile too and closed their gates to him.
“But nevertheless, from so weak and slender a beginning,” says Plutarch, “he not only subdued great nations and took many cities, but was also victorious over the generals sent against him.”

Who was this Sertorius anyway—and what was he doing fighting on the side of the barbarians against the Romans, his own people?

There was a civil war going on in Italy. A general named Sulla, after winning a great victory in the East, had come back to Rome with his army and started killing his adversaries. He was on the side of the senate and the old patrician families. Sertorius was a leader of the other side—the people’s party. He had to flee or be murdered. For months he was on the run all over the Mediterranean and Africa. Finally he accepted the call of the Lusitani to be their leader and he began organizing an army.

He began organizing a second Rome, a more just Rome, from Spain. His reputation as a fearless soldier and a great leader had already spread over Hispania. He knew how to win the confidence of his men with shows of clemency and also frequent victories. Yet his situation was always very precarious. Now Pompey,  the greatest Roman general of all, had come to Hispania with a vast army to end his revolt.

And just when Sertorius needed all the help he could get to keep his army confident, an aide announced that the doe was gone. No one had seen it for days.
Yet Sertorius was lucky one more time. Some men found the doe wandering in the hills at night and brought it to him. “Keep this quiet,” he told the men, and paid them good money.

He hid the doe and allowed a few days to pass. Then one morning he came out of his tent with strange cheerfulness and strode to the tribunal, where he did his daily business. “I’ve had a wonderful dream,” he told the barbarian leaders. “Great good fortune is on the way.”
Then he climbed up onto the tribunal and began to work.

“And now,” says Plutarch, “the doe was released by her keepers at a point close by. She spied Sertorius and bounded joyfully towards the tribunal, stood by his side and put her head in his lap and licked his hand as she had always done before. Sertorius returned her caresses appropriately and even shed a few tears, whereupon the bystanders were struck with amazement. Convinced that Sertorius was a marvellous man and dear to the gods, they escorted him with shouts and clapping of hands to his home, and were full of confidence and good hopes.”

He beat Pompey.

Read more about  Sertorius, the Roman Hannibal

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How would you like to rule the world?
Charles V ruled it—the best part of it, which included Western Europe and America.

Charles V at the Battle of Mühlberg by Titian

He worked and worried day and night for forty years and then threw in the towel. “Don’t imagine that the pleasure of ruling so many peoples…isn’t mixed with… bitterness and linked with trouble,” he told his son. “If you weigh in a fair balance on the one hand the prerogatives and preeminences of sovereignty, and on the other the work in which it involves you, you will find it a source of grief rather than of joy and delight. But this truth looks so much like a lie that only experience can make it believable.”

Charles was a particularly gifted ruler. He was smart and brave and hard-working. But those qualities weren’t enough to make him successful except now and then and only for a short time. The French King Francis I tried to take his possessions; the Turks assembled great armies to seize the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, the Lutherans split up the Church.

He fought plenty of wars and he won a few; but his failure to recapture the city of Metz in 1552 got him down. He was worn out, tired, achey. “I’ve had it,” he told himself. “Let someone else take the helm.”

So he gave his Austrian possessions to his brother Ferdinand and his Spanish, Italian, Netherlandish, and American possessions to his son Philip. And he walked out of the palace—an unheard-of thing for a monarch to do.

Where did he go? To one of the beautiful cities of his kingdom? To the Blue Coast to watch the waves?

No. He went to a little monastery in an oak forest in Spain. It was a dinky Hieromite monastery called Yuste with no more than twenty cloistered monks. They must not have believed their ears when the prior announced to them that the emperor was coming and not just for a visit.

The cloister of Yuste

Why did Charles go to a monastery?

He wanted to spend his final years preparing his soul for eternity. After all, he believed he would have to give an account to God of his stewardship and he wanted to work, so to say, on its presentation.
He had never had much time to stop and think. When he took over Spain at twenty it was as though he had hopped onto a coach that set off at a gallop and never stopped or slowed down. He rode right through the world, right through life. There was barely enough time to try to understand the conflicts he met before he was asked to solve them, to act. Then, almost before he knew it, they were far behind him and new ones were in front. A thousand times he would have liked to tell the driver to stop and let him go over what he had done or get a better look at the wonderful things he saw passing by the window; but there was no driver.

They built a little annex for him at the monastery. It was  two-storey building but his quarters  were as small as a modern apartment and not half as comfortable. The tapestries covering the walls were fine art but they didn’t keep out all the draft. And besides, the emperor ached all over. He had gout. The court carpenters under orders from his doctors made him a special chair so he could raise his legs while sitting but he got relief only occasionally. There was a passage leading from his living-room to the altar of the chapel. At first he walked over to Mass every day. Later, when it became too painful for him to move, he just watched through the open doors.
After only eighteen months he died. They buried him in the courtyard, the emperor of the world.

And now?

Now his body is in the famous crypt of the Escorial with all the Spanish kings since his day. His son Philip II built that huge palace-monastery in the mountains near Madrid.
The monastery of Yuste, burnt down by Napoleon’s troops, was rebuilt in the last century, and the emperor’s rooms restored. You see it just as it was in his time.

Charles V at Yuste by Delacroix

Some say the truth of Yuste was that the Emperor didn’t lead a simple, monastic life but that he spoiled himself. He painted and listened to music and fished and ate like a pig. But a drive up through the woods of Cuacos and a visit to Charles’ rooms will show you their inadequacy for worldly delights.

Lately Yuste has become a symbol of Europeness and the Spanish government has created a European Academy of Yuste which awards a yearly Charles V European Prize.
Here is the 2007 prize-winner, the Bulgarian Tzvetan Todorov, entering the chapel. This year’s winner is the French politician Simone Veil.

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Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal’s father, went to check in with the priests at the temple just before setting out for Spain. His army was waiting for him in their ships at the port of Carthage.

The priests told him the omens were good, so he went ahead and performed the usual ceremonies, which included the sacrifice of a sheep.  His nine-year-old son Hannibal stood with him at the altar and watched his dad make the sacrifice and go through the prayers.

When they were finished, Hamilcar asked the priests and other men present to stand back a little from the altar while he spoke to his son.  “Would you like to come along with me to Spain?” he asked the boy. He had been given the mission of subjugating Iberia in preparation for the coming war with Rome.
“Oh yes!”  Hannibal had been told that he would have to wait to go until he was older.  “Please let me go!” he begged. “Please, father!”
“All right,” said Hamilcar.  “I’ll show you how to fight.  And do you know why?  So you will always beat a Roman.”

And then he made the little boy swear.
He led him to the altar and lifted him up to the dead sheep that he had just sacrificed; and he made Hannibal put his little hand on the still-warm body and swear that he would never, ever, become a friend to the Romans.

So deep and so strong was the resentment Hannibal’s father felt after that first lost war with Rome.

A legend?  The story came from Hannibal himself.  That is and isn’t reason to believe it, since he was a most wily old fox and was known to mislead all his life. But that he hated Rome no one ever doubted and so it might as well be true.

He told it years later to a Greek king.  Hannibal had lost his last battle with the Romans and was on the run. In Greece King Antiochus took him in, which was a bit of humanity the Romans didn’t appreciate, of course.  Rome was tired of the way Greece had always intrigued against them. Now Rome spread the rumor that Hannibal had become their secret ally.  This made the king doubt and he asked Hannibal outright if it was true.  That’s when he told the swearing story and added: “Now that you know this, which I’ve never told to anyone, be sure that as long as you are hostile to Rome, you can count on me as your most trustworthy supporter.  But if ever you turn around and become an ally of Rome’s, then watch out for me—you won’t need to call and ask me how I lean.  There is nothing in this world—nothing—that I won’t do to harm Rome.”

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Rinconete and Cortadillo is one of the best of Cervantes’ short stories.

Two raggedy kids coincide at an inn on the road to Seville.
“What is your trade?” one asks the other as they lay in the shade at siesta time.
“I’m a cutpurse.   And you?”
“I’m a card shark.” He shows his grimy deck, oval-shaped because the corners are worn off.
They like each other. “Why don’t we join up?”
“Great.” And they stand up and hug to formalize the pact.
They hope to make a good living as thieves in Seville, which is the biggest and richest city in Spain.

And in fact when they arrive they start off well, fleecing a couple of trusting clients.  But soon they learn that if they are going to steal in Seville they must pay a tax to the mafia leader Monipodio. A porter takes them to his hideout and introduces them. They agree to join his organization. There are clear benefits: they must obey Monipodio’s orders and turn over a portion of what they steal, and in return he will protect them and keep them from being hanged or sent to the galleys.

The boys meet Monipodio and hand him a purse they’ve swiped

The rest of the story is about the ways of the little crook association and its strange and funny members.

These figures of the characters in Rinconete and Cortadillo, carved by Federico Coullaut-Valera, are on the monument to Cervantes in the Plaza de España, Madrid.

Cervantes gets a kick out of the way they talk and their mixture of religion and crime. The humor is sometimes reminiscent of Mark Twain and Steinbeck and Brecht.

Cervantes knew all about the underworld. He may have been a little crooked himself. There is some evidence that he started out at eighteen as a fugitive. Later he became a tax-collector in Seville and was accused of embezzlement (but then acquitted). He was in jail at least three times.

And after five years of card-playing as a prisoner in Algiers he knew every game and card trick any shark might pull.  Some scholars think he may have lost a lot of money gambling.

Cervantes by Salvador Dalí

Cervantes had Rinconete and Cortadillo in his drawer while he wrote Don Quijote.  After he became famous he published it with some other stories in a book he called Novelas Ejemplares (1612).  It is one of the first short stories in our modern sense.  One of Cervantes’ innovations was dialog.  Stories by Boccaccio and Chaucer had little or none.

A Great Story by Cervantes 2 is  about another of the stories in that collection: The Lawyer of Glass. A brilliant university student is fed a love potion by a woman he rejects and the poison makes him lose his mind. He believes he is made of glass.

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The most famous ancient sanctuary in Western Europe was in Cadiz,  in old Spain.

Hercules was buried there.

Hercules Monument at Cadiz, Spain

There was an oracle there. You could ask questions and get a cryptic reply or an interpretation of a dream.

The Oracle of Delphi by John Collier

Some of the most famous men of ancient history came as pilgrims to ask her for advice.

Hannibal stopped in to consult the oracle before he set off across the Alps with his army.

Julius Caesar asked the oracle to interpret a dream he’d had that troubled him. (He raped his mother. “Not to worry,” said the oracle in perfect Greek. “That wasn’t your mother but the world. The dream means you will conquer the world.”)

Pliny was there, Polybius, Cassius Dio, many of the Roman emperors, like Trajan. The Emperor Caracalla had the proconsul Aemilianus murdered for asking the Cadiz oracle who the next emperor would be.

For nearly one thousand five hundred years the sanctuary did service. As late as 400 AD it was still open when the poet Aviennus went for a visit.

What was it like?

It looked from the outside like a Greek temple. Ancient coins show it.  The facade was a triangular pediment or gable supported by four columns. You walked up the steep steps, passed through the two central columns and entered through enormous bronze doors. On the doors were reliefs showing the Twelve Labors of Hercules.

Somewhere near the entrance were two columns—the two “Pillars of Hercules”. The ancient authors don’t agree on what they looked like.

The Pillars of Hercules Monument at Jews’ Gate, Gibraltar

According to Posidonius they were eight cubits tall (ten feet?) and made of bronze; but Philostatus says they were of gold and silver and only one cubit high. An ancient Phoenician inscription on them had already become illegible by Roman times.

The temple was only partially roofed, so inside it wasn’t dark like Roman temples. The altar at the far end was open to the sky. Every day celibate priests with shaven heads and wearing snow-white tunics sacrificed a lamb or a dove and sprinkled its blood on the altar.

A perpetual fire burned on a tripod but there was no statue of the god. The Carthaginians, who founded the temple towards the end of the second millenium BC, didn’t allow images of their divinities. They had dedicated the shrine to to their god Melkart, whose famous temple they had left behind in Tyre, at the other end of the Mediterranean. Carthage disappeared and the Greeks came and Melkart became Herakles, a Greek god who was so similar to the Phoenician one that everyone just let one do for the other. To the Romans Herakles was Hercules—they were all names for the same god-hero. He was buried in a crypt under the temple—the mortal half of him.

There were various chapels or side-altars. One was dedicated to Old Age; others to Poverty, to Art, to Death, to the Month, and to the Year. Perhaps they looked like old attics, filled with strange wax exvotos and dried cloth, wooden and metal undefinables (weapons?), covered with the dust of ages.
There were relics, too, such as Teukros’  belt and Pygmalion’s miraculous olive branch (the olives were emeralds).

Its Great Treasure

The Temple received donations, legacies, and votive offerings from all over. Its treasury must have looked like Uncle Scrooge’s money-silo—gold all the way up to the top.

Hannibal’s relative Magón was the first to loot it in 206 BC.
Bogud, the king of Mauritania, tried to loot in in 38 BC.
The unscrupulous Roman consul Varron did loot it; but Caesar had the treasure restored.

My source for most of these facts is Historia de la Hispania Romana by A. Tovar and J.M. Blazquez, Alianza Editorial, 1975

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At a Roman banquet guests asked the waiter for a little garum. No fear of insulting the host. He was proud to have the best condiments money could buy.
Some loved their garum (also called liquamen)—fish sauce—and poured it on everything from meat to vegetables. Some even used it a third time on their dessert.

It must have been good. How did they make it?

Here is the recipe according to Gargilius Martialis, a third-century writer:

“Take fatty fish (salmon or sardines or eels), dried aromatic herbs, and salt. Lay down a layer of those strong-smelling herbs at the bottom of a big tub or barrel. Which herbs? Wild fennel, coriander, cultivated fennel, celery, savory, sage, rue, wild spearmint, levístico (?), thyme, marjoram, hedge-nettle, poppies. [In Europe these are common wild herbs.]
On top of that herb layer lay your fish—whole if they are small; in pieces, if big. Now cover the fish with a layer of salt two fingers thick.
Fill the barrel up to the top alternating these three layers: the herbs, the fish, and the salt. Cover the barrel and let it sit for seven days.
Then for twenty days stir the mix from time to time. Then pour off the liquid at the bottom of the barrel and strain it.” That’s your garum.
The first liquid collected was called gari flos—virgin garum—and it was the most prized. Liquid collected on later days was considered of lower quality and priced accordingly.

And the solid remains of those fish in the barrel—did they throw those away?

No: they made allec from them. Allec was a poor man’s food. Cato, the great Roman, used to feed allec to his slaves when he ran out of olives.
Something like allec was what two hundred years earlier Pliny the Elder had called garum. And to him it wasn’t the putrefied mush of fish but of their entrails. The contents or the quality of the sauce changed over time. After all, garum was around for nearly a thousand years. The Greeks invented it, but it was the Romans who really ate it up.

As long as Rome lasted men sprinkled garum on their food. It was the decisive element in all great Roman cuisine. It was used as an ingredient of many dishes, in most sauces, and to give taste to fried foods, soufflès, boiled meat. There was garum wine and garum vinagre. Water garum was army feed during the first century. Garum cured too. Dioscorides says you couldn’t beat it to heal sores of all kinds.

Hispania was the biggest exporter. There were factories all along the east and south coasts of the Peninsula. Because of the booming garum industry towns grew up, some of them big, like Baela Claudia (Bolonia), near Cadiz.

Here is a map showing the old salted fish and garum factories along the Spanish and North-African coast:

From Garum et industries antiques de salaison dans la Mediterranèe Occidentale, by Ponsich and M. Tarradell, Paris, 1965

Garum disappeared mysteriously with the Empire. Today there are a few restaurants near Cadiz that sell their version of it for you to try. The brave put it in their mouth. The heroes swallow it.

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Atapuerca, near Burgos, Spain, is the greatest dig of modern times. Everyone is excited.

What is all the fuss about? What’s so special about Atapuerca?

On July 8, 1994, a new species of man was discovered.
They found human remains 800,000 years old. That is so far back that no one could believe it.

They are by far the oldest human remains ever discovered in Europe. We knew about Neolithic man and his cave drawings. We knew about Neanderthal man. But those lived 100,000 years ago, not 800,000.

Scientists had to give the creature a new name because his bones weren’t like those of any of the known kinds of hominids. They dubbed him HOMO ANTECESSOR. The current theory is that Homo Antecessor was an ancestor of both Homo Sapiens (us) and Homo Neanderthal. Precisely after him the species developed in two directions.

What was Antecessor like?
He looked like us. His face was surprisingly similar to ours, though his forehead slanted back at a sharp angle.
Did the archaeologists find out anything else about him?
Yes, two VERY SURPRISING things so far.

The first is that he had no fire. The nice picture you have of the warm cave with the eternal fire that someone had to keep burning to ensure light, warmth, and safety—that’s wrong. In the caves of a million years ago—even of 200,000 years ago or less—there is no evidence of any fire. No inventor had come up with the idea of using it, no Prometheus had brought it to Man.
So they ate their food uncooked. The piles of bones have scratches from flint tools but no scorching, no signs of cooking.

The second thing is even more astonishing. The sweet, stinky, brutes  ate people. And afterwards they threw their bones on the same heap with the deer, the rabbits, and the bears. Which is how the scientists found them, all mixed, now 800,000 years later. There didn’t seem to be a ritual of any kind.  Did they eat their enemies? Their dead?

(Click on thumbnail to enlarge)

This  artist’s conception of homo antecessor appears in a brochure published by the Atapuerca Foundation and given to visitors at the excavation site. The artist is Mauricio Antón.

UNESCO declared Atapuerca a World Heritage Site in 2000 and many countries have sent teams of scientists of all disciplines to work there. Funds roll in from all over the world.

Not everyone is pleased. “You can’t get any of those scientists to read a book or to study the great achievements of man in art, philosophy, or literature,” said an old humanities professor. “But the whole crowd will go running to see what the monkeys were doing.”

All the illustrations in this post belong to the Atapuerca Foundation.

See this article in Nature Magazine

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