Dederiyeh Cave ( ar, مغارة الديدرية, ku, Şkefta Duderî)
Afrin Post
(in Kurdish). Retrieved 01 May 2021. is a cave in Mount Simeon
Mount Simeon or Mount Simon ( ar, جبل سمعان Jabal Simʻān ), also called Mount Laylūn ( ar, جبل ليلون, is a highland region in Aleppo Governorate in northern Syria. The mountain is located in the Mount Simeon and Aʻzāz distric ...
, Syria, in which systematic excavations have taken place since 1987. The cave is located 60 kilometers northwest of Aleppo
)), is an adjective which means "white-colored mixed with black".
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in the Afrin District, on the left bank of a wadi
Wadi ( ar, وَادِي, wādī), alternatively ''wād'' ( ar, وَاد), North African Arabic Oued, is the Arabic term traditionally referring to a valley. In some instances, it may refer to a wet (ephemeral) riverbed that contains water onl ...
, at an altitude of . Two Neanderthal
Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. While th ...
children were found in the cave, in 1993 and 1997–1998, both of which showed evidence that they were buried.
Description
The cave consists of a chamber, 15 meters wide and 8 meters high, rising up to 10 meters in the back where a chimney is a second exit, and 50 meters deep. The main entrance is north and overlooks the wadi.[
]
Excavations
Tentative excavations took place in 1989 and 1990, and more serious research started in 1993; it quickly yielded the remains of a Neanderthal child, about two years old, an almost complete set of remains. A second (partial) skeleton was found in 1997–1998, in a pit of 70x50 cm, filled with fine brown dirt in which flint were found. The researchers concluded that this also was intentionally buried.[
In all the remains of up to fifteen individuals have been found in the ]Middle Paleolithic
The Middle Paleolithic (or Middle Palaeolithic) is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle Paleoli ...
layers of the cave. More than half of them were children.[
]
See also
* Fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
* List of fossil sites ''(with link directory)''
* List of human evolution fossils ''(with images)''
References
{{reflist
Afrin District
Paleolithic sites
Paleolithic Asia
Archaeological sites in Morocco
Caves of Asia
Human evolution
Paleoanthropological sites