Technology

The first tools from stone to ivory, we show you how humans always strive to improve.

Fire, an essential acquisition

A room in which, surrounded by fire, we'll explain to you its importance in human life.  

The brain.

Large scale recreation where you can delve deeper to know the details, inside and out. This brain has been designed by artist Daniel Canogar and shows neuronal connections through recycled cables showing brain peak activity

Ecosystems of evolution

The three systems that most influenced our future: rainforests, where hominids originated; the savannah, where we stocked up on meat for our brains to grow; and the tundra-taiga, which saw us populate every continent.

Atapuerca in augmented reality

An augmented reality system lets you see what the Sierra de Atapuerca and its people were like at key moments in evolution. From a fixed point installed on the second floor of the museum you can see how the four inner landscapes come alive with different hominids and animals.

Hunters and gatherers of the Pleistocene

We teach you the keys to understand social organization and its evolution from the earliest societies.

Symbolism The complexity of the human mind.

Funeral practices are one of the oldest rites of humanity.

The creative spirit of Homo sapiens

Aesthetic concerns of someone who could barely speak. 

The Holocene, early shepherds and farmers

We arrive at the Neolithic to show you their work tools and settlements.

Gallery of evolution

Hyperrealistic reconstruction of hominid evolution over 7 million years.

Man: evolutionary tinkering

Our precious Nobel laureate, Ramón y Cajal, revealed to us how the brain works. Here we will explain it.

The theory of evolution

Step into the recreation of the brig in which Darwin conceived his theory of natural selection. 

Being a human is complex

What makes us human? What sets us apart from other primates? These are some of the answers you'll find.

Ramon y Cajal, a Spanish Nobel Prize

On level 0 you'll find a tribute to Ramon y Cajal, renowned Spanish physician, noted for discovering the mechanisms that govern the morphology and connective processes of nerve cells, a revolutionary new theory that came to be called the "neuron doctrine" which is based on brain tissue being composed of individual cells. His work and contribution to neuroscience were recognized in 1906 with the Nobel Prize in Medicine. 

Atapuerca Project: Communication and dissemination

Science, a media phenomenon that gets society together.
 

The Railway Trench Site The oldest fossils of the Sierra:

- The face of Homo antecessor.
- Fauna and stone tools older than 1 million years. 

Sierra de Atapuerca

A place to meet and exchange.
 

The Pit of Bones The most emblematic fossil remains of Atapuerca:

- Skull nr. 5, known as 'Miguelón'.
- The Hip 'Elvis' of Homo heidelbergensis.

Other sites

In Sierra de Atapuerca, also being worked on, are newer chronology sites of the time of the Neanderthals (50,000 years) and other prehistoric and historic periods where human groups were already farmers and shepherds (7,000 years to the present).