Juan Luis Arsuaga

Juan Luis Arsuaga Ferreras (born 1954 in Madrid) is a Spanish paleoanthropologist and author known for his work in the Atapuerca Archaeological Site.

As a child he already showed a great interest in prehistory after reading The Quest for Fire and visiting a dig in nearby Bilbao.

Arsuaga is a visiting professor of the Department of Anthropology at the University College London and since 1982 he has been a member of the Research Team investigating Pleistocene deposits in the Atapuerca Mountains (Province of Burgos, Spain).

This contrasts with the secretive atmosphere surrounding the digs to near Orce, in southern Spain, which has yielded tools indicating human presence that predate the finds at Atapuerca.

He has been a lecturer at the universities of London, Cambridge, Zurich, Rome, Arizona, Philadelphia, Berkeley, New York, Tel Aviv, among others.