They are the oldest human fossils ever found on British soil. Excavated 30 years ago at Boxgrove, in West Sussex, the leg bone and teeth of an early human species were subsequently dated as being around 480,000 years old.
Other finds made at Boxgrove also revealed these ancient men and women were hunting horses, deer and perhaps even rhinos and butchering them. Crucially, they were doing so with sophisticated stone tools long before the appearance of Homo sapiens – though the exact identity of these individuals remained a puzzle.
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Initial analysis suggested the bones belonged to a species known as Homo heidelbergensis, a powerfully built people who were originally thought to have evolved in Africa before spreading into Europe. However, another interpretation has suggested the inhabitants of Boxgrove may have belonged to a group of early Neanderthals, a species that originated in Eurasia, and established itself there for the next 400,000 years until dislodged by Homo sapiens.
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