The Valdocarros II site, located in Arganda del Rey (Madrid), contains evidence of the use and control of fire for cooking some 250,000 years ago.
This is confirmed by researchers from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and the Herriot Watt University of Edinburgh (United Kingdom) in a study published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
“It constitutes one of the few examples of fires controlled by species prior to Homo neanderthalensis recorded in Europe and one of the oldest testimonies of the use of fire in the open air in a Lower Paleolithic site with Acheulean technology -in which large lithic tools predominate. that resemble hand axes- in Europe and the only one in the Iberian Peninsula”, explains Joaquín Panera, professor of the Department of Prehistory, Ancient History and Archeology of the UCM and one of the directors of the investigation of the site.
For the first time, the use of dry pine branches has been confirmed in Paleolithic homes, which in an environment where this species was scarce implies extensive knowledge of the environment. Fatty acids found in the homes show that meat was ‘cooked’ in Valdocarros II, perhaps from deer (Cervus elaphus) or aurochs (Bos primigenius), of which abundant bone remains have been found at the site.
In addition, the discovery of polyaromatic hydrocarbons, which are products of incomplete combustion, reveals that the pine burned at temperatures of about 350 degrees -low compared to the 800 degrees reached by uncontrolled fires in the Pleistocene- for short periods, which It favors the cooking of meat, since high-temperature fires tend to carbonize and burn food on the outside before the inside has reached a temperature that makes it easy to eat.
“The hominids from this site show all the necessary requirements to control fire: the use of specific resources such as dry pine wood; specific activities, such as making low-temperature fires used for cooking; and intention, as is implicit in the transport of dry pine wood and the remains of large mammals to a specific place where they were dismembered and cooked”, highlights Susana Rubio Jara, co-director of the research and professor at the UCM.
