Hunas cave ruins
| Hunas cave ruins
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 Hunas cave ruins |
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| Location: | Hunas , Franconian Alb , Germany | |
| Height : | 517 m above sea level NN | |
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Geographic location: |
49 ° 30 '14.5 " N , 11 ° 32' 38" E | |
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| Cadastral number: | A 236 | |
| Geology: | dolomite | |
| Type: | Cave ruin | |
| Discovery: | 1956 | |
| Show cave since: | No | |
| Lighting: | No | |
| Overall length: | unknown | |
The Hunas cave ruin is a filled cave near Hunas , a district of the Central Franconian municipality of Pommelsbrunn in the district of Nürnberger Land in Bavaria .
location
The cave ruins are located about 400 meters west of the hamlet of Hunas on the edge of a quarry that has been in operation since about 1860 on the eastern slope of the Steinberg.
description
It is also known as the Steinberg cave ruin and is located in the Franconian dolomite of the Malm Delta . The Steinberg is traversed by the remains of a cave system that was cut in two places. In the northern part of the now dismantled cave consisted of a system of narrow passages and smaller chambers. The original dimensions of the cave space can no longer be reconstructed, as it was partially destroyed by the previous quarry and the reorganization of the quarry in 1982. The original cave entrance may have been in a small valley that is now used by the quarry road.
The cave was discovered in May 1956 by the Erlangen paleontologist Florian Heller . It is a cave that has been buried for decades and was only found again when its loose backfill was cut during quarry work. The subsequent excavations by Heller were completed in 1964.
When the quarry was resumed, the not yet excavated layers of the cave , which collapsed about 80,000 years ago and filled with loose sediments, were partially destroyed. Rescue excavations followed, which were carried out from 1983 to 1985 by the Chair of Prehistory and Protohistory at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg . Four meters of the more than 20 meter high layer package could still be examined in the rearmost part of the former cave. The excavations were then continued with enormously refined methods until 2012. It turned out that the deposits house an archive that is unique far beyond Bavaria.
Traces of more than 130 animal species were found in the deposits. These animals got into the cave in very different ways. Some animals looked for shelter or a place to hibernate here , such as bears and bats . Others, however, were brought into the cave as prey by predators or humans. According to previous knowledge, the numerous animal remains that were recovered, as well as a few stone tools and flint cuts, still belong to the penultimate Ice Age. With an age of more than 200,000 years, these represent the oldest traces of human life known to date in Bavaria.
The excavations showed that the presence of humans can be proven in almost all layers. Also proven are cave bears , cave lions , cave hyenas , wolves , arctic foxes and red foxes . The rich small fauna, together with plant remains such as charcoal, pollen and the analysis of the sediments, allow good insights into the climate development during the deposition period. In this way, the mighty sequence of layers becomes a multiply structured archive that documents the constant change in climate and environmental conditions during the Ice Age over a long period of time . The thick lower layer package shows moderate to warm-temperate conditions with some climatic fluctuations. At that time Barbary macaques lived on the Franconian Jura , which was covered by light mixed forest . The climate archive also shows that this phase came to an end and it became increasingly drier and colder. The Nordic vole , the miniature pipe hare, the lemming and other cold-tolerant animal species spread in a row. The top layers began to rewarm.
In the new excavation area in 2002, a sintered cover was found at the base of the sequence of layers . An investigation revealed a time window of around 100,000 to 125,000 years in the range of 200,000 years. This means that the entire series of sediments could be dated to the beginning of the Würm glacial period . The stone artifacts found in the upper layers are consistent with the dating of the archaeologists. The devices from the lower strata differ significantly from the younger ones and can be compared with Middle Pleistocene sites. The re-dating makes the 1986 find of a human molar from Hunas a classic Neanderthal and thus the oldest hominid from Bavaria.
The area is designated by the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments as ground monument D-5-6435-0023. In the cave cadastre Fränkische Alb (HFA) it has the cadastral number A 236.
Some of the finds and a copy of the Neanderthal tooth can be viewed in the museum opened in 2011 in the Hartmannshof station building .
Access
The cave ruin is located in a commercially used quarry on private property. Access is therefore prohibited. For the fifth birthday of the Prehistory Museum Urzeitbahnhof on October 16, 2016, guided tours with the excavation manager Brigitte Hilpert and her colleague Dieta Ambros were offered for the last time . The cave remains will probably be dismantled in the near future as part of the further quarry operation.
In the vicinity of the excavation site there is a memorial for the former excavation director Brigitte Kaulich, who died in 2006 .
Picture gallery
Panoramic view of the cave ruins
Last tour on October 16, 2016
Shift sequence
Remains of the excavation installation
Brigitte Kaulich memorial plaque
literature
- Fritz Huber: The northern Franconian Alb , Volume 2: The caves of the karst area A , Königstein
- Brigitte Kaulich: Hohler Fels, Petershöhle and Hunas. Three paleolithic cave sites in the heart of the Hersbrucker Alb. In: Layers of a Landscape (Ed .: Karl Heinlein). Nuremberg 1996, ISBN 3-9805656-2-9
Web links
- List of monuments for Pommelsbrunn (PDF) at the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation
Individual evidence
- ^ "The lime, stone and cement works in Sebald, history" , accessed on December 8, 2016
- ^ "Location of the cave ruins in the Bavaria Atlas" , accessed on December 7, 2016
- ^ "Archaeological Lexicon, The Hunas Cave Ruins" , accessed on December 7, 2016
- ↑ "Pommelsbrunn, District Hunas" , accessed on December 7, 2016
- ↑ "Our museum celebrates its 5th museum birthday on October 16, 2016" , accessed on December 7, 2016