Paglicci Cave is an archaeological site situated in Paglicci, near

Rignano Garganico Rignano Garganico is a town and ''comune'' of the province of Foggia in the Apulia region of southern Italy. Geography Apricena, Foggia, San Marco in Lamis, San Severo and San Giovanni Rotondo are neighbouring towns. In 2017, migrants were rem ...

Apulia it, Pugliese , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographic ...

, southern

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

. The cave, discovered in the 1950s, is the most important cave of

Gargano Gargano (, Gargano Apulian Italo-Romance arˈgæːnə is a historical and geographical sub-region in the province of Foggia, Apulia, southeast Italy, consisting of a wide isolated mountain massif made of highland and several peaks and forming ...

. The cave is an attraction of the

Gargano National Park The Gargano National Park () is a national park in the province of Foggia in southern Italy. Aside from the Gargano promontory (encompassing the ancient woodlands of the Foresta Umbra) from which it takes its name, it includes also the Tremiti Is ...

Description

In the cave, situated near Rignano Garganico, there are more than 45,000 individual

find Find, FIND or Finding may refer to: Computing * find (Unix), a command on UNIX platforms * find (Windows), a command on DOS/Windows platforms Books * ''The Find'' (2010), by Kathy Page * ''The Find'' (2014), by William Hope Hodgson Film and tel ...

s, including

Paleolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...

tools, human and animal bones. They are currently housed in Rignano Garganico's Museum. Evidence of paleolithic oat harvesting dating to 30,600 BC was linked to a pestle recovered from the cave. The cave contains also some Paleolithic mural paintings, depicting horses and handprints. Images of goats, cows, a serpent, a nest with eggs, and a hunting scene have also been found engraved on bone. Two human skeletons have been found as well, belonging to a boy and a young woman, both wearing deer bone or teeth ornaments. Paglicci cave contains the earliest

Aurignacian The Aurignacian () is an archaeological industry of the Upper Paleolithic associated with European early modern humans (EEMH) lasting from 43,000 to 26,000 years ago. The Upper Paleolithic developed in Europe some time after the Levant, where t ...

and

Gravettian The Gravettian was an archaeological industry of the European Upper Paleolithic that succeeded the Aurignacian circa 33,000 years BP. It is archaeologically the last European culture many consider unified, and had mostly disappeared by 2 ...

remains of Italy, dated to c. 34,000 and 28,000 BP (uncalibrated).

Risk of collapse

In 2008 Italian archaeologists made a plea to the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, to dedicate funds to save the cave which is at risk of imminent collapse.

Relevance in population genetics

Caramelli et al. (2008) tested human remains from

Paglicci 23 Paglicci 23 is the name for human remains found in Paglicci Cave in Apulia, Italy that have been dated to 28,000 years Before Present. In 2008 a scientific team led by David Caramelli tested Paglicci 23 and found that mtDNA sequences correspondi ...

dated 28,000 BP (before present), and found that the individual had the human mitochondrial haplogroup H, specifically the rather common

Cambridge Reference Sequence The Cambridge Reference Sequence (CRS) for human mitochondrial DNA was first announced in 1981. A group led by Fred Sanger at the University of Cambridge had sequenced the mitochondrial genome of one woman of European descent during the 1970s, ...

. The result was exhaustively tested for possible contamination and replicated in a separate test. Fu et al. (2016) found that 31-35 thousand years old human remains from Paglicci 133 carried Y-DNA haplogroup I (not I1) (CTS674+, CTS9269+) and mtDNA haplogroup U8c.Qiaomei Fu et al
The genetic history of Ice Age Europe
Nature(2016)doi:10.1038/nature17993Received 18 December 2015 Accepted 12 April 2016 Published online 02 May 2016

References

External links

Grotta Paglicci website
{{Authority control Caves of Italy Landforms of Apulia Archaeological sites in Apulia Prehistoric sites in Italy Province of Foggia

Description

Risk of collapse

Relevance in population genetics

See also

References

External links