128,000 years ago, there were no sapiens in Estepona.
Following the town hall’s announcement of the discovery of a major archaeological site with some 100 Lower and Middle Paleolithic remains, “we can only say that around 120,000 to 140,000 years ago, bands of Heidelbergensis and Neanderthal humans passed through here, leaving behind lithic remains. We don’t have any more information,” cautiously assures Jose María Tomassetti, commercial archaeologist with the company Arqueotectura, in charge of excavations for the study of the Junta de Compensación de Mesas de Salavieja, a group of property owners who intend to build a housing estate in the area, close to the town center and currently undergoing expansion.
It’s an exceptional site because of the dating of the remains,” he says.
The pieces, discovered in spring 2021, were work tools specialized for domestic tasks, made from sandstone pebbles and, to a lesser extent, limestone and flint.
“We’re talking about remains from the Lower and Middle Paleolithic and from the Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthal populations, respectively. Everything we’ve found predates the presence of Homo sapiens. These are not absolute dates, but relative ones, as we have only studied the artifacts we have recovered. There is a geological level corresponding to the Middle Pleistocene in which there are traces of the Acheulean period (Lower Paleolithic), but no bones have been found. What is known is that there is, in archaeological terms, “a conglomerate, a statigraphic whole in which stone tools used by individuals of the species Homo heidelbergensis who travelled in the region are found”. Then, in a more recent episode, dated to the Mousterian period (Middle Paleolithic), we found traces of the passage of Neanderthals”, he explains.
All these discoveries have now been added to the municipal archaeological museum’s collection.
In the area where the work was carried out, authorized by the Junta de Andalucía and supervised by Estepona’s Historic Heritage Delegation, there had been municipal caution since the PGOU of the 1990s, which determined that there were poorly preserved archaeological remains from the Roman period, which could belong to a farmhouse from 2,000 years ago.
About two years ago, remains from the Paleolithic period were identified on the surface of the land.
Someone reported it to the town council, to the municipal archaeologist, Ildefonso Navarro, who included it in the archaeological precaution.
From then on, “with the start of a new urban development at Las Mesas de Saladavieja, the developer hired us to carry out a diagnostic of the site”.
According to Tomassetti, “the Palaeolithic in the province of Malaga is poorly documented, as there are few sites. There are many in the Campo de Gibraltar. They’ve been documenting them for years, providing evidence of the passage of these human groups. In Malaga, little research has been carried out, and little is known about it. Gradually, in the Manilva, Casares and Estepona regions, more and more sites of this type are appearing. In Estepona, this is the first to be excavated. It’s a small grain of sand that makes it possible to locate the spaces occupied by these ancient populations”.
