Though the best documented first appearance of hominins in Eurasia is from Dmanisi, Georgia, there are several earlier sites with traces of hominin presence. Here were present taphonomic analyses of sites from the Olteţ River Valley in Romania, with particular attention to Grăunceanu, which preserves the earliest evidence of hominins in Europe in the form of cut-marked bones. The Grăunceanu assemblage (n=4,524) is extremely well preserved with highly visible bone surfaces, very little weathering or reworking, and high numbers of nearly complete specimens. Large mammals, especially artiodactyls and perissodactyls, dominate the assemblage, though many smaller taxa are also represented. Carnivores are diverse and well represented, and there is evidence of carnivore modifications on 9.5% of the assemblage. Most specimens show some level of root etching and post-depositional damage; other taphonomic alterations are rare. There is evidence of density-mediated attrition, especially for the Artiodactyla, though in the Perissodactyla the pattern points toward utility-driven attrition. Sedimentological analysis indicates that sediments recovered inside bones from the assemblage are silty sands. Our analyses suggest that the Grăunceanu assemblage was likely accumulated near the paleo-Olteţ river in the Early Pleistocene, perhaps during overbank flooding events in an alluvial plain, capturing evidence of large ungulates, carnivores and their food remnants, and even a small contribution from hominin activities.
Curran et al. (Fri,) studied this question.