the locality of Fiume Santo is also found a fossil site where an Oreopithecus bambolii, a prehistoric anthropomorphic primate, was discovered, dated at 8.5 million years. Middle Ages The origin of the city remains uncertain. Among the theses, according to folk tradition the first village was founded around the 9th–10th century AD by the inhabitants of the ancient Roman port of Turris Libisonis (current Porto Torres), who sought refuge in the mainland to escape the Saracen attacks from the sea. It developed from the merger of a number of separate villages, such as San Pietro di Silki, San Giacomo di Taniga, and San Giovanni di Bosove. The oldest mention of the village is in an 1131 document in the archive of the Monastery of St. Peter in Silki where is cited a guy named Jordi de Sassaro (George of Sassari), a serf from the nearby village of Bosove. Sassari was sacked by the Genoese in 1166. Immigration continued until, in the early 13th century, it was the most populous city in the Giudicato of Torres, and its last capital. After the assassination of Michele Zanche, the latter's last ruler in 1275, Sassari became subject to the Republic of Pisa with a semi-independent status. In 1284 the Pisans were defeated by the Genoese fleet at the Battle of Meloria, and the city was able to free itself: it became the Republic of Sassari, the first and only early independent renaissance city-state of Sardinia, with statutes of its own, allied to Genoa; the Genoese were pleased to see it thus withdrawn from Pisan control. Its statutes of 1316 are remarkable for the leniency of the penalties imposed when compared with the penal laws of the Middle Ages. From 1323 the Republic of Sassari decided to side with the King of Aragon, in whose hands it remained for much of the following centuries, though the population revolted at least three times. The revolts ceased when King Alfonso V of Aragon nominated the town as a Royal Burg, directly ruled by the King and free from feudal taxation, during a period in which it may have been the most populous city in Sardinia. Further attempts made by Genoa to conquer the city failed. In 1391 it was conquered by Brancaleone Doria and Marianus V of Arborea, of the independent Sardinian Giudicato of Arborea, of which it became the last capital. However, in 1420 the