Hominin Footprints in Caves from Romanian Carpathians

Abstract

The Romanian karst hosts numerous caves and shelters that over time provided remarkable archaeological and anthropological vestiges. Altogether they show that humans must have entered caves in Romania at least as early as 170,000 years ago. However, ancient human footprints are very rare in the fossil record of East-Central Europe, with only two known locations in the Apuseni Mountains of western Romania. Vârtop Cave site originally preserved three fossil footprints made about 67,800 years ago by a Homo neanderthalensis, whereas Ciur Izbuc Cave was probably home of early H. sapiens that left almost 400 footprints (interspersed with spoors of cave bears), which were indirectly dated to be younger than ~36,500 years.