Juan Luis Arsuaga with Jesús García Calero

When palaeontologist Juan Luis Arsuaga and his team discovered a hominid dating back some 350,000 years at the Atapuerca cave complex in northern Spain in 1992, they dubbed him Miguelón, after the Spanish cyclist who won the Tour de France that year. Further discoveries have followed that have helped establish the origins of humans. Arsuaga, Professor of the Geological Sciences Faculty at Madrid’s Complutense University, is also director of the Museum of Human Evolution in Burgos. He is taking part in the Taller de Sueños initiative at this edition of the Hay Festival. He talks to journalist Jesús García Calero.