Šipka is a

cave A cave or cavern is a natural void in the ground, specifically a space large enough for a human to enter. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. The word ''cave'' can refer to smaller openings such as sea ...

located near

Štramberk Štramberk (; german: Stramberg) is a town in Nový Jičín District in the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 3,500 inhabitants. The historic centre of Štramberk is well preserved and is protected by law as an Cultural m ...

, Moravian-Silesian Region,

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

, 440 m

above sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as ''orthometric heights''. The comb ...

. In 1880, a

mandible In anatomy, the mandible, lower jaw or jawbone is the largest, strongest and lowest bone in the human facial skeleton. It forms the lower jaw and holds the lower tooth, teeth in place. The mandible sits beneath the maxilla. It is the only movabl ...

of a

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 ...

child was found there. The age of the child has been estimated to be between 9 and 10 years.Jiří Svoboda, Vojen Ložek, Emanuel Vlček, "Hunters between East and West: the Paleolithic of Moravia", 1996, , pp.52-5
(Google books)
/ref> The archeological work in Šipka was conducted from 1879 to 1893 by Karel Jaroslav Maška. The cave was probably alternatively inhabited by Neandertals and

cave bear The cave bear (''Ursus spelaeus'') is a prehistoric species of bear that lived in Europe and Asia during the Pleistocene and became extinct about 24,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum. Both the word "cave" and the scientific name ' ...

s. The site also yielded Mousterian tools and traces of

hearth A hearth () is the place in a home where a fire is or was traditionally kept for home heating and for cooking, usually constituted by at least a horizontal hearthstone and often enclosed to varying degrees by any combination of reredos (a lo ...

s. This was the first discovery of Neanderthal remains in their cultural context.

References

External links

*
Archeolog.cz: Description, site map, photo gallery and literature
(in Czech). {{DEFAULTSORT:Sipka 1879 archaeological discoveries Caves of the Czech Republic Prehistoric sites in the Czech Republic Neanderthal sites Archaeological sites in the Czech Republic Moravian Wallachia Nový Jičín District Mousterian