Neanderthal tools found in El cau del Duc

El cau del Duc is a karst cave on the south slope of the mountain of Santa Caterina, in the massís del Montgrí (Baix Empordà), included in the Inventory of the Archaeological and Paleontological Patrimony of Catalonia. It can be reached from the Coll de Santa Caterina, following the "roques planes". A large opening on the south face of the cave is visible from the town of Torroella de Montgrí, a few meters below the summit. The roof has a few meters of height and the floor has a slight slope outwards.

Inside the cave, the Pic del Montgrí was found. The first paleontological excavations carried out by Lluís Pericot and Matías Pallarés in 1922 collected una cinquantena de peces of lithic industry, which were deposited at the Museu Arqueològic de Barcelona. The simplicity of the finds led Pericot to ask for advice from Hugo Obermaier about the type of culture they were dealing with, who classified them as of asturian (Mesolithic) type, recently characterized.

However, in 1956, Pericot, in the light of the findings made in the caves of Serinyà, changed his opinion, considering that the objects had an older age and would belong to a more ancient period, situating them at the beginning of the Würmian glaciations (around 80,000 years ago). In 1965, Henry de Lumley and Eduard Ripoll studied the pieces found by Pericot and Pallarés in the 1920s, which were at the Museu Arqueològic. The analysis of the tools carried out by Lumley and Ripoll concluded that these belonged to the period of the Neanderthals and not to the Asturian.

A recent doctoral thesis (2005) places the occupation of the caus del Duc (both in Torroella and in Ullà) for indirect datings between 150,000 and 350,000 years BP, mentioning that Carbonell and others consider the simultaneous occupation of the two places and consider them a center of exploitation of the nearby territory.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons