Abstract
IN more respects than one, the discovery of a skull of Neanderthal man in the Guttari cave at Monte Felice Circeo, about sixty miles south of Rome, is of unique significance for the study of the chronology and distribution of Mousterian man in Europe of the palælithic period. Owing to conditions affecting the use of the cave by man, it is possible to fix the date of occupation within tolerably accurate limits, while the sealing of the cave in Mousterian times which brought that occupation to a close, has not only preserved the evidence of Neanderthal man and his domestic economy intact but also saved it from tha superposition of the debris of subsequent intrusions—conditions unique in caves of Mousterian occupation. The skull, now the third of the type known from Italy, was found on February 25, 1939, by Dr. A. C. Blanc of the University of Pisa, who with the Abbé Breuil, discovered the second of the Italian Neanderthal skulls. Dr. Blanc had already examined thirty-one caves at Monto Circeo and found in them evidence of both the Mousterian and Aurignacian cultures, but the present find was made in a cave which had been discovered on the previous day only by its owner, S. A. Guttari.
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Neanderthal Man in Italy. Nature 144, 106 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144106a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144106a0