Homo heidelbergensis illustration

Illustration by Mauricio Antón for the permanent exhibition of the Altamira National Museum and Research Center. Two Homo heidelbergensis are depicted eating and preparing meat, with tools typical of the archeological industry known as Acheulean, in a bushy, woodland landscape.
Homo heidelbergensis was the main inhabitant of Europe and the Iberian Peninsula between 500,000 and 200,000 BCE, living mainly in sites that were out in the open. These people were similar in height to humans of today and had a cranial capacity that was slightly smaller than ours. They were more robustly built, their foreheads had a prominent supraorbital ridge and they had strong jaws.