Elba, the first Mesolithic woman found in Spain

Carlos

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Experts reconstruct the last day of Elba, the pastoralist of the Mesolithic of O Courel

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https://cadenaser.com/programa/2017/05/11/la_ventana/1494515972_986461.html

Elba is the first woman dated from the Mesolithic found in Spain. She was Galician, with dark eyes and hair and, for more information, lactose intolerant. It was supposedly dedicated to herding and today it would be about 9,300 years old.

Elba's ncomplete skull appeared in 1996 and the other bones were found in several expeditions since 2010. The tests carried out on the remains with carbon 14 revealed that it is 9,300 years old and the food allergy it suffered.

His punished bones reveal that this female who only measured five feet (and who supposedly worked with huge animals) led a very hard life. That probably in childhood had suffered a strong blow to the head that caused a head injury. That he fed poorly, with long periods of scarcity. He suffered from osteoarthritis and surely endured strong dental pain for months before his death. I mostly ate vegetables. And for the collagen it is known that it was not exactly from the area, but from some rather close granitic territory. It was an autochthonous Galician, linked with other remains found in the north of Portugal.

The genetic analysis showed that she was a woman with dark eyes and hair, lactose intolerant, belonging to haplogroup U, characteristic of European hunter-gatherers, and in particular to subhaplotype U5b1, originated in the Iberian Peninsula 16,000 or 20,000 years ago.

The research, which has lasted more than 10 years, has been updated as technological advances emerged that allowed improving the way of working. The importance of this finding is the oldest western sample studied in Europe: "It is an exceptional finding because it is normal to find burials and in this case we have found a woman who was working".
 
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The poetess Rosalía de Castro

I do not know to what extent the vision and cultural information that the specialists who reconstruct a face thousands of years ago can influence and how it can influence them when it comes to doing so.
 
Mesolithic and Pastoralism in the same context? I'm confused?
 
It looks like the only real component here is the Cranial Cavity, you cannot deduce the low part of the face only with that... It looks pretty weird, the Jaw is almost too smooth and those cheekbones...
 
Mesolithic and Pastoralism in the same context? I'm confused?

"He also allegedly traveled with the three uros that formed his flock, a huge adult specimen with an antlers more than two meters and two younger ones that were not offshoots of the first"

Apparently in the hole next to her there were 3 uros, reason why they must have deduced that it was his flock, since if the two scions were not children of the adult bull it had to be a herd. I do not know, I have to meditate.
 
I live in the same area where Elba lived... you can find faces today just like hers everywhere in that area, it´s incredible. The roof of a hidden cave collapsed when she and the aurochs passed over, she was crushed by one of them and died there, near the limit between actual Galicia and Leon.
 
[QUOTE = Davidtab; 562001] Vivo en la misma área donde vivía Elba ... puedes encontrar caras hoy como las de ella en todas partes en esa área, es increíble. El techo de una cueva oculta se derrumbó cuando ella y los uros pasaron por alto, fue aplastada por uno de ellos y murió allí, cerca del límite entre la actual Galicia y León. [/CITAR]

Evidently if in the reconstruction of an unconscious way they have recreated the face of Rosalía de Castro it is evident that at the moment you are going to find many similar women in the zone.

Postdata: Do not you put the Spanish flag in your presentation?
 
Being galician obviously I'm spanish, in other words, I'm proudly spanish because I'm proudly galician. The very best is always plusses identities, not exclude. So the flag is the galician one, which specifies more in a web like this.

Elba's face is similar to a lot of women from northwestern Iberia, even everywhere in Southwestern Europe. Even with fairer skin, fairer hair and green or blue eyes, she would be similar to many women over the land she lived.
 
Poor woman. I'm surprised that as a Mesolithic woman she ate mostly vegetables. Perhaps they were having trouble hunting the aurochs and smaller game?

So much for how great it was to live as a hunter-gatherer. There's been so much romanticization of ancient peoples in this hobby, including farmers and steppe peoples.
 
Don't you guys think the reconstructed face looks a bit too like many modern Iberian women for it to be a precise and likely image of hers? Her skin complexion also looks a bit too light for me, I think that moderately light, olive-skinned tone would be found in EEF, but not in WHG like her (I'd expect WHG to not be as dark as that reconstruction of the Cheddar Man, but kind of as dark as modern Yemenis or Pakistanis). As Carlos said, I have some doubt if the scientists who made the reconstruction could avoid being unconsciously influenced by what they preconceived as the looks an ancient Galician woman would have.

As for the herding and flock thing, I'm honestly very confused by that conclusion. Couldn't she be just chasing and leading wild herds to trap and kill them, like Amerindian tribes did with bisons and so on?
 
Don't you guys think the reconstructed face looks a bit too like many modern Iberian women for it to be a precise and likely image of hers? Her skin complexion also looks a bit too light for me, I think that moderately light, olive-skinned tone would be found in EEF, but not in WHG like her (I'd expect WHG to not be as dark as that reconstruction of the Cheddar Man, but kind of as dark as modern Yemenis or Pakistanis). As Carlos said, I have some doubt if the scientists who made the reconstruction could avoid being unconsciously influenced by what they preconceived as the looks an ancient Galician woman would have.

As for the herding and flock thing, I'm honestly very confused by that conclusion. Couldn't she be just chasing and leading wild herds to trap and kill them, like Amerindian tribes did with bisons and so on?

Completely agree as to both points. That's why all these reconstructions have to be taken with a grain of salt. In particular, some Europeans have a great deal of trouble accepting that all their ancestors weren't fair skinned. There were, of course, no WHG pastoralists.

The picture was no longer available, so here it is:
1494406591_973226_1494406957_noticia_normal.jpg
 
Don't you guys think the reconstructed face looks a bit too like many modern Iberian women for it to be a precise and likely image of hers? Her skin complexion also looks a bit too light for me, I think that moderately light, olive-skinned tone would be found in EEF, but not in WHG like her (I'd expect WHG to not be as dark as that reconstruction of the Cheddar Man, but kind of as dark as modern Yemenis or Pakistanis). As Carlos said, I have some doubt if the scientists who made the reconstruction could avoid being unconsciously influenced by what they preconceived as the looks an ancient Galician woman would have.

As for the herding and flock thing, I'm honestly very confused by that conclusion. Couldn't she be just chasing and leading wild herds to trap and kill them, like Amerindian tribes did with bisons and so on?

I completely agree with this comment.
 
The cheekbones maybe put them in the corner hairdresser injecting industrial silicone, then became independent and vegan and the uros had them as pets.
 
@YGorcs
as a whole her reconstructed face is very 'cromagnon'like, was is not astonishing for that time - but if present today among Iberian women (and elsewhere), it's not the kind of face which makes the majority there. Maybe Galicia shows a bit more than the Spanish mean, here I'm not sure.
@Halftap
If you 're right, and I fear it's the case, it's poor science; yes, indeed, this kind of molding is not inducing onebody to confidence...
 
To Ygorcs (again): nevertheless, as a whole I agree with your post.
 
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He estado trabajando unas pocas horas sobre cómo sería esta mujer (Elba). Ha tomado un tiempo, pero cuando se ha demostrado, ha sido una experiencia increíble. Miles de años observándolos, disfruten de la oportunidad.
 
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Don't you guys think the reconstructed face looks a bit too like many modern Iberian women for it to be a precise and likely image of hers? Her skin complexion also looks a bit too light for me, I think that moderately light, olive-skinned tone would be found in EEF, but not in WHG like her (I'd expect WHG to not be as dark as that reconstruction of the Cheddar Man, but kind of as dark as modern Yemenis or Pakistanis). As Carlos said, I have some doubt if the scientists who made the reconstruction could avoid being unconsciously influenced by what they preconceived as the looks an ancient Galician woman would have.

As for the herding and flock thing, I'm honestly very confused by that conclusion. Couldn't she be just chasing and leading wild herds to trap and kill them, like Amerindian tribes did with bisons and so on?

I mean they likely have influenced by modern europeans or themselves... You have to choose over the bias to represent it like you know your surrendings, or to represent it like the Cheddar Man, wich for me looks like an highly exageration. We dont have autosomal dna from her i guess, so it doesn't matter that much. I guess, her complexion would have looked as the one from many Iberians till today, some Portuguese and Spanish people look like Indians or Pakistanese, but when you asked them, they are not aware of any kind of Indian ancestry so, might be it. Something like this: https://c7.alamy.com/comp/BPCJKY/an...quest-of-lisbon-is-depicted-behind-BPCJKY.jpg
 
`^^
With so much immigration we have from Pakistanis, there are also very good Hindus in bed, I have never confused them with my countrymen, but it does happen that some of them could pass for a Spanish or a Swiss, they are one among a million but there are.
 
I mean they likely have influenced by modern europeans or themselves... You have to choose over the bias to represent it like you know your surrendings, or to represent it like the Cheddar Man, wich for me looks like an highly exageration. We dont have autosomal dna from her i guess, so it doesn't matter that much. I guess, her complexion would have looked as the one from many Iberians till today, some Portuguese and Spanish people look like Indians or Pakistanese, but when you asked them, they are not aware of any kind of Indian ancestry so, might be it. Something like this: https://c7.alamy.com/comp/BPCJKY/an...quest-of-lisbon-is-depicted-behind-BPCJKY.jpg

Beside we don't know if she is partly tanned, what is often the case among Mediterraneans, this pretty young wife you show with your link doesn't evocate basic Indians nor Pakistanis, rather a typical 'atlanto-mediter' type - I hope she is a Portuguese example you propose here!?!
 
Beside we don't know if she is partly tanned, what is often the case among Mediterraneans, this pretty young wife you show with your link doesn't evocate basic Indians nor Pakistanis, rather a typical 'atlanto-mediter' type - I hope she is a Portuguese example you propose here!?!

The exemple was relative to the skin complexion i would imagine for some prehistoric Europeans, not about the Indian / Pakistanese phenotype. Dark features are a dominant gene, so if prehistoric europeans were like the cheddar man reconstruction, this complexion should have survived till today. Or are we gonna call to a WHG mass extinction who replaced dark features with faired ones?
 

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