Grotta del Cavallo

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Grotta del Cavallo (Italy)
Grotta del Cavallo
Grotta del Cavallo
Entrance to the Grotta del Cavallo

The Grotta del Cavallo (German: 'Cave of the Horse') is a limestone cave in the southern Italian Apulia , on the rocky coast of Uluzzo , near Nardò , 90 kilometers south of Taranto . The cave is about 15 meters above sea level today. It has a rounded, five meter wide and 2.5 meter high opening to the sea and was first scientifically investigated in 1961.

The cave became famous for the discovery of two milk teeth , which, as research published in 2011 showed, represent the oldest remains of modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) in Europe. The teeth discovered there in 1964 were associated with stone artefacts from the Uluzzien , a culture that was then associated partly with the Neanderthals and partly with the Cro-Magnon man . This culture got its name after the closest place Uluzzo. Artifacts of the Uluzzien were found almost exclusively in southern Italy, although sites in central and northern Italy as well as Greece were associated with it.

According to the new study published in 2011, the teeth were reassigned to the Cro-Magnon humans based on the anatomical features of their tooth crowns and roots. The age of the stratum of 42,000–40,000 BP is calibrated to be around 45,000 to 43,000 calendar years ago , so that the finds are among the earliest evidence of the presence of Homo sapiens in Europe.

literature

  • Valentina Borgia, Jacopo Crezzini, Annamaria Ronchitelli : Grotta del Cavallo (LE): strumento in osso inedito dell'Uluzziano antico , in: XLVII Riunione Scientifica Preistoria e Protostoria della Puglia in memoria di Santo Tinè , Museo di Civiltà preclassiche della Murgia meridionale 2012, pp. 663-667. ( academia.edu )
  • Paolo Boscato, Jacopo Crezzini: Middle – Upper Palaeolithic transition in Southern Italy: Uluzzian macromammals from Grotta del Cavallo (Apulia) , in: Quaternary International 252 (2012) 90–98, doi: 10.1016 / j.quaint.2011.03.028 .
  • Katsuhiro Sano et al .: The earliest evidence for mechanically delivered projectile weapons in Europe. In: Nature Ecology & Evolution. Volume 3, 2019, pp. 1409-1414, doi: 10.1038 / s41559-019-0990-3 .

Web links

Commons : Grotta del Cavallo (Uluzzo)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ nature.com (PDF; 667 kB) : "Grotta del Cavallo: Description of the site and history of excavations."
  2. ↑ Marta Camps: Sourcebook of Paleolithic Transitions. Methods, Theories, and Interpretations. Springer, 2009, p. 385.
  3. ↑ Stefano Benazzi, Katerina Douka, Cinzia Fornai , Catherine C. Bauer, Ottmar Kullmer, Jiří Svoboda, Ildikó Pap, Francesco Mallegni, Priscilla Bayle , Michael Coquerelle, Silvana Condemi, Annamaria Ronchitelli , Katerina Harvati , Gerhard W. Weber: Early dispersal of modern humans in Europe and implications for Neanderthal behavior , in: Nature 479 (2011) 525-528, doi : 10.1038 / nature10617

Coordinates: 40 ° 9 ′ 18.9 ″  N , 17 ° 57 ′ 37.3 ″  E