The Archaeological Sites of the Sierra De Atapuerca. 150 Years of Explorations, Excavations and Science

2018 marked the 150th anniversary of the publication of Descripcion con planos de la llamada Cueva de Atapuerca. This was the first scientific book about the Sierra de Atapuerca. Since then, several sites in this territory located in Burgos began to form part of the archaeological inventories of Spain. However, it was not until that 1978 that a young team of archaeologists, biologists and geologists began working on these sites in systematic fashion. 1,500 people, including students, teachers and researchers, have participated summer after summer in the different excavation campaigns. To date, 15 sites have been explored, allowing for study of the evolution of human groups in Western Europe since over a million years ago. This fieldwork has materialized in a thousand scientific publications that have placed the Atapuerca Research Team at the forefront of worldwide studies on human evolution. Knowledge of the evolution of these investigations allows us to analyse the development of archeology in relation to our origins in Spain.