Altamura man

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Altamura man (Italy)
Altamura
Altamura

The Altamura man is a partially preserved fossil of the genus Homo , which was discovered in 1993 in the Grotta di Lamalunga near Altamura in Apulia / Italy and is still there today. The skeleton was initially dated to the epoch of Homo heidelbergensis or, since it also has Neanderthal features, assigned to the Neanderthal, later it was dated to around 130,000 years and assigned to the archaic Homo sapiens . Determining the age and allocation of the find are still controversial.

The bones are located in an extensive cave system far from the entrance and are heavily overgrown with stalactites . The circumstances of the find suggest that the man was not z. B. was abducted by a predator into the cave, but died sitting at the site. He had probably fallen into the cave, injured himself in the process, could no longer climb back and searched for an exit in total darkness until he reached a dead end and gave up. Because of the extraordinarily good state of preservation of the bones and the foreseeable very difficult recovery, it was decided that the fossils should remain in their original position for the time being.

The cave is closed to visitors. A nearby museum that has been opened as a show cave reproduces the circumstances in the large cave, in which numerous animal fossils have also been found.

literature

  • Eligio Vacca, Vittorio Pesce Delfino: Three-Dimensional Topographic Survey of the Human Remains in Lamalunga Cave (Altamura, Bari, Southern Italy). Coll. Antropol., Volume 28 (1), 2004, pp. 113–119, full text (PDF; 299 kB)
  • V. Pesce Delfino, E. Vacca: Report of an archaic human skeleton discovered at altamura (Bari), in the "Lamalunga" district. Human Evolution, Volume 9 (1), 1994, pp. 1-9, doi : 10.1007 / BF02438135

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5009/
  2. ↑ http://www.geo.de/GEO/kultur/geschichte/436.html?p=1&pageview=&pageview=
  3. ↑ http://www.lochstein.de/hoehlen/I/apulien/altamura/altamura.htm

Coordinates: 40 ° 52 ′ 18.7 ″  N , 16 ° 35 ′ 15 ″  E