Atapuerca

Atapuerca is a municipality in the province of Burgos, Castilla y León, situated beside the Sierra de Atapuerca on the Camino Frances. The Sierra de Atapuerca is a UNESCO World Heritage Site of extraordinary paleontological significance, containing cave systems where fossils of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 900,000 years ago, represent the oldest known hominid remains in western Europe.

The Gran Dolina and Sima de los Huesos cave sites on the ridge have yielded hundreds of hominid fossils and stone tools accumulated over hundreds of thousands of years of occupation. The site is managed jointly by Spanish research institutions and the museum in Burgos.

For pilgrims on the Camino Frances, the Atapuerca crossing is one of the most historically layered moments of the route: walking a path used by modern pilgrims for a thousand years across terrain occupied by human ancestors for nearly a million. The museum in the village explains the excavations.