Franchthi Cave - with nearly 25,000 years of continuous occupation

A large cave in Greece has been re-investigated

The site was occupied, more or less continuously, for about 25,000 years, during which time came the invention of agriculture and pastoralism. What that means is that changes that were wrought by these phenomenal leaps in human understanding can be traced at one place, by examining differences between different layers.

Significance of Franchthi Cave

There are many reasons why Franchthi Cave is an important site; three of them are the length and period of occupation, the quality of preservation of the seed and bone assemblages, and the fact that it was excavated in modern times.

Franchthi Cave was excavated ..... between 1967 and 1979. Investigations since then have concentrated on the millions of artifacts recovered during the excavations

The re-investigation was done to long at the hundreds of thousands of samples using new techniques

Franchthi Cave view one

Franchthi cave view two

Some of the 'firsts'

First appearing at ca. 11,000 B.C. are lentils, vetch, pistachios and almonds. Then ca. 10,500 B.C. and still well within the Upper Paleolithic Period appear a few very rare seeds of wild oats and wild barley. Neither becomes common until ca. 7000 B.C

reply to post by Hanslune


Interesting info.

Don't you, the OP have anything to say about it?

Originally posted by Chamberf=6
reply to post by Hanslune

 

Interesting info.

Don't you, the OP have anything to say about it?

Just providing information, unfortunately I haven't been there

Very interesting, flag for ya
Sadly there aren't any more photos of the cave, and the one in the article is tiny.
It must be amazing to actually be there and study a place where our ancestors lived and progressed for soooo long.
This must be an archeo-anthropologist wet dream

Originally posted by drakus
Very interesting, flag for ya
Sadly there aren't any more photos of the cave, and the one in the article is tiny.
It must be amazing to actually be there and study a place where our ancestors lived and progressed for soooo long.
This must be an archeo-anthropologist wet dream

edit on 22/11/2011 by drakus because: you gringos and your damn language lol

This must be an archeo-anthropologist wet dream

Not quite; that position of honour would be witheld for an excavation having writing or symbols in plenty