Spanish scientists find earliest human remains in cave

MADRID, March 27 (RIA Novosti) - Scientists in northern Spain have unearthed human remains dating back 1.2 million years, which indicates that people inhabited Europe 400,000 years earlier than first believed, national media said Thursday.

The newspaper cited Manuel Dominguez-Rodrigo from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid as saying: "It is clear that this is the oldest human in Europe."

The fossil jawbone, rudimentary tools and animal skeletons discovered in a cave in the Sierra de Atapuerca region, near Burgos, suggest that the first humans came to Western Europe from the Near East as part of the demographic expansion from Africa.

Remains found in Dmansi, Georgia, dating back some 1.7 million years ago are believed to be one of the first signs of human expansion from Africa.

But until now the previous oldest fossils, found nearby in 1994, led scientists to believe that humans did not reach Western Europe until around 500,000 years ago.

The region in northern Spain is already known as a site where the earliest known hominids in Europe have been discovered.

The most famous site in Atapuerca is the 'Sima de los Huesos' (The pit of bones), where more than 1,600 human fossils, including 30 skeletons dating back 350,000 years, have been found.