Animal bones, traces of Neanderthal found in karst cave
Postojna, 8 November - Bones of cave animals and traces of a Neanderthal settlement believed to be the oldest in Slovenia, with their age estimated at 170,000 years, have been found in a karst cave near the village of Šembije in the southwest of the country. The finds have been estimated to be twice as old as those from the Divje Babe site.
Uršnja Luknja in the Ilirska Bistrica area is a small cave, not even 20 metres long, but it nevertheless contains a rich legacy of the period between the last two ice ages, the Notranjska Museum said on Friday as it announced the discovery.
Slavko Polak, a biologist and curator at the regional museum in Postojna who found a cave bear tooth in this cave as a child, told the STA that explorations of the cave had so far been rare.
When they got the permission to excavate a small probe hole, they found that the finds are between 150 and 170 thousand years old.
"It is a period before the last ice age, which means that it is an early Neanderthal, twice as old as the one whose flute was found in the Divje Babe cave," Polak said.
He was referring to the discovery of a 55,000-year-old flute, made of a cave bear bone and believed to be the world's oldest musical instrument, in the cave in western Slovenia in 1995. It is now exhibited at the National Museum in Ljubljana.
Experts published as early as in 2021 an article about the cave containing bones of cave bear and other species of Pleistocene animals, and quartz artefacts that served as tools for early prehistoric people were found there in recent years.
Due to little research in the cave, the sediment is still mostly intact, and the location is an exceptionally attractive for exploration due to its interesting genesis, as the old layers can be accessed in a fairly simple way.
As they have to process a lot of material, which includes rhinoceros and Pleistocene porcupine finds, no new research is currently planned, but the procedure to recognise the cave as an archaeological site has already been initiated.
Polak said that the public will be informed about the new finds after the examination has been completed, adding that the artefacts that had already been examined were put on display this year in Prem Castle near Ilirska Bistrica.
He advised against unauthorised exploration of the cave, noting that many people imagine that the bones that are being found are just lying around the cave, which is not the case. "The bones are virtually cemented between gravel, loam or clay."
The recent history of the cave is also interesting. In the mid-19th century, it was inhabited by a recluse called Urša, after whom the cave got its name, while at the end of WWII around 50 people were hiding in the cave for a short time.
The first archaeological research of the cave was conducted in 1880, and more extensive exploration took place between 1982 and 2015, when 252 fossils of animal bones and teeth were found there.