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El Mito de Atapuerca: Orígenes, Ciencia, Divulgación . Oliver Hochadel. Barcelona: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. 2013, 383 pp. 24€, paper. ISBN 978-84-939695-4-7.

2017; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 73; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1086/690544

2153-3806

Lawrence Guy Straus,

Medieval Architecture and Archaeology

Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewsEl Mito de Atapuerca: Orígenes, Ciencia, Divulgación. Oliver Hochadel. Barcelona: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. 2013, 383 pp. 24€, paper. ISBN 978-84-939695-4-7.Lawrence G. StrausLawrence G. StrausUniversity of New Mexico Search for more articles by this author University of New MexicoPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThe Sierra de Atapuerca, a small hill range near the city of Burgos in Old Castile, has become, since 1976, the Olduvai Gorge of Spain and, indeed, Europe—although the title is disputed by the fossiliferous badlands of Orce in Andalucia. Oliver Hochadel, a German historian of science trained in Switzerland and Ireland, works in a Spanish government research institute in Barcelona. In this substantive, highly perceptive and well-informed book, he analyzes the “merchandizing” (or, more politely, “the popularization”) of the Atapuerca project which, under the dynamic leadership of a triumvirate consisting of Juan Luis Arsuaga, José María Bermúdez de Castro, and Eudald Carbonell, has discovered, studied, and published (in the world’s top science journals) many of Europe’s most important paleoanthropological discoveries. By way of full disclosure, Hochadel had consulted me via email about my 1972 work with Geoffrey Clark at Atapuerca, but his main interviews were with Clark. I have followed the research in the Burgos sites closely for years and know the project’s “godfather,” Emiliano Aguirre, and the three co-directors. This familiarity with the project allows me to vouch for the veracity of the author’s observations. I can attest that it is virtually impossible to turn on the radio or television or to open a newspaper or magazine in Spain without having news of Atapuerca: some new, blockbuster discovery (the oldest, the most complete, the most unusual, etc.).The Atapuerca sites (some in the infillings of caves cut by a failed late-nineteenth-century English railroad trench, others in “normal” caves and rockshelters) span the period between the Lower Pleistocene (Elefante at 1.2–1.4 mya; Gran Dolina Layer 6 at 0.8 mya) and the Holocene (Portalón, Mirador, etc.—Metal Ages), and, in between, the Middle Pleistocene horizons of Gran Dolina and Galeria, plus the Sima de los Huesos. The dating for the latter’s unique collection of >6500 bones of 28 individuals of an early form of Homo has ranged from 300 to 600 kya, with the most recent dates having retreated to 430 kya (Arsuaga et al., Science 344:1358–63, 2014). Most controversial has been the naming of a new hominin species, H. antecessor, first at Gran Dolina and then at Elefante, and its initial (but later abandoned) assignment as the common ancestor of Neandertals and modern (i.e., African) humans. But there is more: evidence of cannibalism (or at least human corpse butchery), deliberate (ritual?) disposal of the H. heidelbergensis dead in an aven, and a putative burial offering (a solitary handaxe) in the Pit of the Bones. Superlatives abound and Hochadel describes the “hype” quite accurately. But “it’s not bragging if you can prove it.” The Atapuerca team, despite the unrelenting propaganda to raise funds and to stoke Spanish national pride, consistently delivers not only stunning discoveries, but also high-quality analyses by world-class specialists who are mostly Spaniards, many trained within the framework of the project over the past four decades.Hochadel sets the Atapuerca tale within the context of Spain’s nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century scientific backwardness and national inferiority complex. He recites the history of the rejection of the authenticity of the Altamira paintings by “official” (i.e., French) prehistoric science and reminds us of the important work of the Marqués de Cerralbo at Torralba and the nationalism of Eduardo Hernández-Pacheco in the face of early foreign (“colonialist”) research by Hugo Obermaier and Henri Breuil. The underlying current of resistance to foreign appropriation of the Spanish archaeological and paleontological patrimony runs throughout the book, as the “triumverate” had to fend off (French) attempts to muscle in on Atapuerca. Yet there is ambivalence: for example, the significant work of F. Clark Howell at Torralba and Ambrona (involving the then-young Aguirre, who would become the mentor of the triumverate), the friendship and support of Henry and Marie-Antoinette de Lumley (not to mention the critical U-series dating involvement of James Bischoff of the USGS in the Atapuerca project and, more recently, the dental anthropology of Rolf Quam of SUNY Binghamton).Hochadel shows how, quite deliberately, the co-directors actively cooperate with the compliant Spanish news media in “selling” the project, while also playing to a worldwide scientific community, crafting the differing messages very skillfully, although perhaps more successfully in the Spanish arena than internationally in terms of some of their more audacious claims (e.g., the cranium-lacking H. antecessor, Middle Pleistocene burial rites, and humanlike empathy). Hochadel reviews the astounding production of popular books on evolution (almost 30—including some novels) by each of the co-directors, rightly showing a before-and-after Atapuerca in terms of awareness and understanding of human paleontology by the Spanish public. (I have seen the two extroverted co-directors, Arsuaga and Carbonell—both cut from the Indiana Jones mold—on Spanish TV opining on all manner of subjects, not just human evolution. There is a Spanish love of “public” explorers, and they extravagantly fall into this role, whereas Bermúdez is far more reserved—and superbly diplomatic in his cultivation of world scientists and royals alike.) Hochadel also contrasts the Atapuerca project with the Orce project and other Catalán discoveries of Miocene apes in Catalonia in terms of their scientific and media success. The casts of characters, the rivalries, the battles and intrigues are fully presented, though there is some repetition. The book also includes an overly long, somewhat disconnected chapter on the science of two- and three-dimensional reconstructions of early hominins, focusing on interactions between researchers and artists. I found Hochadel’s description of how habile the co-directors (including most incredibly the flamboyant Catalán communist, Carbonell) have been in courting the Spanish royal family, politicians, capitalists and the army understated. He “digs up a lot of dirt” on the rivalries with foreign specialists, who (like Aguirre himself) have not been so unanimous in their acceptance of many of the triumvirate’s claims. An astute observer of Spanish history and society, Hochadel tries to find parallels between the post-Franco rise of the Atapuerca project and the more recent wave of excavations of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War. While interesting and well-informed, this seems “a stretch,” but clearly the Atapuerca phenomenon is emblematic of the “new,” democratic Spain.I add that the Atapuerca story continues with one breakthrough after another: for example the recent publication of the mitochondrial genome of the Pit of the Bones hominins and their nature as “incipient Neandertals” (M. Meyer et al., Nature 505:403–6, 2014). On the other hand, members of the team recently organized the World Congress of Prehistoric Sciences in Burgos, a city which has “evolved” from Franco’s bleak wartime capital dominated by barracks and convents to the totally revitalized, tourism-driven home of a world-class museum-cum-institute of Human Evolution, thanks to the Atapuerca project. Team directors have also taken over research at Orce and have been involved in many other projects (mainly Middle Paleolithic) throughout Spain, as the Atapuerca “organization” comes to dominate (with many consequences) early Stone Age research in Spain, having brought Spanish early human research from the Dark Ages of the Franco regime into the forefront of international sophistication and relevance. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Anthropological Research Volume 73, Number 1Spring 2017 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/690544 © 2017 by The University of New Mexico. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.