The human remains from the Sima de los Huesos middle Pleistocene
site (Atapuerca, Spain) are analysed in two contributions.
Gracia-Téllez et al. (2013) present a palaeopathological study of
one of the individuals from this site represented by Skull 5. This individual
had severe orofacial lesions (periodontal disease, tooth
wear and fracture, periapical abscesses and maxillary osteitis)
that could be the cause of death. Martínez et al. (2013) study the
communicative capacities of H. heidelbergensis from reconstruction
of the outer and middle ears in five individuals from the Sima de los
Huesos. In these individuals, the sound power transmission and the
occupied bandwidth, a variable related with communicative capacities,
were more similar to modern humans. Their results indicate
that H. heidelbergensis were capable of understanding and producing
the full range of sounds emitted during modern human spoken
language.
Bermúdez de Castro and Martinón-Torres (2013) proposed
a model for the first occupation of Europe that could be the result
of several hominin migrations originating from a central area of dispersals
of Eurasia. Their scenario tries to explain the pattern of human
settlement of Western Eurasia where the main influences in
Europe during the early and middle Pleistocene were derived
from southwest Asia rather than Africa. Probably, several pulses
of hominins from the Levantine corridor would have migrated
into Europe at different times, but these dispersals were probably
restricted by climatic and environmental conditions.
Different hypotheses have been proposed to explain the Quaternary
Megafaunal extinction, and also several explanations have
been suggested for the Neandertal extinction. Following Hortolà
and Martínez-Navarro (2013), the extinction of the Neandertals is
due to direct competition with anatomically modern humans,
and should be seen as being a mere branch of the Quaternary Megafaunal
Extinction.
Finally, the studies of Neandertal mitochondrial DNA are raised
in Wang et al. (2013) to analyse the continuity or substitution
models from Neandertals to modern humans. The conclusion is
that the available data are still too poor to understand genetic
flows.