Day 15: Rest in Burgos - Part One

Burgos offered me a day of rest and ease, that helped immensely with persistent blisters that have been bothering me since the big rainstorm coming in to Zubiri a long while ago. Every morning I cut my gauze, apply ointment, tape everything up and walk fifteen to twenty miles. Every afternoon I pull the whole mess off, shower, sit in the sun and let my aching feet dry in the sun. Today, though, I just got up, put in my walking sandals with a nice cushy pair of socks and walked around Burgos without my backpack. I felt like skipping!

Museum of Human Evolution 

First stop, top of my list, was the Mussolini de la Evolucion Humana where I roamed for hours among the displays of the complex cave systems of Atapuerca and learned about the remarkable finds made there. The large, modern museum and research complex stands facing the large, Gothic cathedral across the river. Quite a paradox of positioning, although today's Pope Francis would most likely celebrate the view: science and faith as complementary books of the story of man.

Four floors of evolution - a Darwinian's dream!

I was imagining St. Jerome, the most learned of the early Latin Fathers, strolling the floors and smiling. He saw no conflict between the Greek system of scientific thought and natural history and his faith. When I entered the second floor that featured Darwin's home study, his cabin aboard the Beagle, and a vast collection of his writings on the mechanics of evolution, I imagined St. Jerome having a cuppa with Charles and getting on well over things like natural selection, genetic sequencing, and evolutionary trees.

Fantastic, life-size wall murals of paleolithic fauna of Iberia. 

Many of these species are found in fossil abundance in Atapuerca.

I am forever grateful to my high school biology teacher, Terry Leef, who was able to offer an AP course in Evolutionary Biology at our Catholic High school.  He had us reading scientific journals, complicated theory, and debating the naysayers long before the popular anti-science religious movement of conservative Bible belt politics. That was a long time ago, but it instilled in me a real love of scientific argument and the spirit of discovery that Atapuerca reignited while on my walk.

A new ancestor - Homo antecessor

Miles of caves contain ages of artwork that spans 50,000 years of occupation 

H. antecessor and child stroll Burgos

The history of humankind in Spain is rooted in tribalism and cultural identity that even today marks the influence of Neanderthal man, who introduced art, music, reverence of the dead, and seasonal ceremony. There is theory to suggest that the appearance of H. sapiens, coming from our long trek up through Africa, may have completed with our Neanderthal cousins of the north, fought them, or intermarried with them. DNA reveals as much. But researchers in the Atapuerca basin know that they lived near each other, camps sometimes only a few miles apart.

St. Jerome, scientific scholar of the Church, Cathedral collection.

From the blending of species, new cultures emerged. Over tens of thousands of years, the Iberian tribes fathered the clans of early Celt-Iberians and the wild Basques, people of the sea and the mountains. The Moors swept north and brought their traditions of irrigation, horticulture, astronomy and science, the building arts, and medicine. Indo-Asian tribes arrived from the East and brought agriculture. It took the Romans 200 years to conquer Spain, and though they occupied the Iberian Peninsula for 800 years, the fierce tribes of the north and south held out against them and traditions, languages, music, and independence endure.