Logbook · 5 places

What to see and do in Atapuerca

What to see and do in Atapuerca (Burgos (Alfoz), Burgos): 5 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 1 Activities · 2 Historical milestones

How far each place is from the centre of Atapuerca

The railway cutting 7.5 km

Towns near Atapuerca

Spain › Castile and León › Burgos › Burgos (Alfoz) › Atapuerca

What to see and do in Atapuerca

Atapuerca
Village
Atapuerca is a municipality in the province of Burgos, in the comarca of Alfoz de Burgos, with 178 inhabitants, known throughout the world for the archaeological and palaeontological sites of its sierra, a World Heritage Site declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 1991. The first documentary mention of the village dates from the year 963, under the spelling adtaporka. Near the village, in 1054, the Battle of Atapuerca was fought between Castilians and Navarrese, in which King García Sánchez III of Pamplona died. Tourism linked to the site has reversed the municipality's depopulation, already employing 15% of its working population, and every autumn it also hosts a famous cross-country race, considered in 2012 the best in Spain.
The railway cutting
Monument
At the end of the nineteenth century the cutting for a mining line sliced through the sierra and laid bare the fill of several caves. From that cutting came the Gran Dolina, the Galería and the Sima del Elefante, today a protected archaeological zone.
The discovery of Homo antecessor
Historical milestone
The fossils recovered from level TD6 of the Gran Dolina, at least eight hundred thousand years old, were defined in 1997 as a new species, Homo antecessor: the oldest Europeans known at the time. The remains, found in 1994, belong to individuals at least 160 centimetres tall, with a broad chest and already modern facial morphology but with primitive-type teeth and a brain smaller than today's; they made simple pebble tools and flakes of quartz and flint, an industry that may have been a forerunner of the later Acheulean industry. The Atapuerca team proposed that it represented an evolutionary link between Homo ergaster and Homo heidelbergensis, and therefore a probable last common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals.
The battle of Atapuerca
Historical milestone
Ferdinand I of León and his brother García Sánchez III of Pamplona, both sons of Sancho III the Great, clashed on the plain facing the Atapuerca mountains on 1 September 1054. The conflict stemmed from the unequal inheritance divided by their father in 1035, which had left García the bulk of the former county of Castile and Ferdinand a diminished domain, and it came to a head when, according to the chronicles, Ferdinand imprisoned his brother after a reconciliation visit at Nájera, and García, upon escaping, declared war on him with the support of their other brother, Ramiro I of Aragon. The king of Pamplona died of wounds suffered in the battle, and his son was proclaimed king on the battlefield itself, after paying homage to the victor.
The visit to the sites of the sierra
Activity
The sites are visited on a guided tour with a shuttle from the village, and in summer the excavation teams can be seen at work. The whole sierra has figured on the World Heritage list since the year 2000.