The hunter-gatherer groups of the Lower
Paleolithic were nomadic, that is, they did not settle permanently in one place. They must have been made up of few human beings, united by blood ties. Although they had no awareness of forming societies, it is thought that they could sometimes join together to carry out activities of collective interest such as hunting.

The remains left by those first inhabitants consist entirely of tools made of stone to perform very varied tasks, such as cutting up the meat of hunted animals or manufacturing other wooden tools such as spears.

This collection preserves a selection of such materials, highlighting, because of their age, those belonging to the Canto Trabajados Industrial Complex, associated, according to Dr. Caro Gómez and other members of the research team in which he collaborates, with Heidelberg Man, considering him to have been the creator of the oldest lithic industry discovered in the Valley. These are worked pebbles whose chronology can be situated between 1 million and 400,000 years ago, although it is known, as demonstrated by Professor Enrique Vallespí, that they continued to be manufactured in later periods of that epoch. From the Acheulean Industry, bifaces traditionally stand out, so called because they present two carved faces and a wide cutting edge surrounding most of the piece, and commonly known as “hand axes.” From that Acheulean industry, we also find other tools such as flakes, trihedrals and choppers.

The main reason why Paleolithic man must have frequented these lands was the fact that in the landscapes of Almodóvar he found an important and abundant source of raw material for the manufacture of his tools: quartzite pebbles, to which other natural, plant and faunal resources would have to be added, with which he also manufactured utensils or food. Vallespí alludes to the fact that the first settlers of the Iberian Peninsula “focused their attention on networks of local settlements in resource areas and lived together with a multitude of animals, undoubtedly highlighting elephants, of which numerous remains have been found in areas near the Guadalquivir, such as Alcolea or Almodóvar del Río.” The oldest pieces manufactured in our locality by our ancestors come from the mouth of the Temple stream and Los Mochos. Likewise, in the surroundings of the railway station, quartzite tools appeared together with remains of an elephant specimen, which reached over 4.5 meters in height.