Old Duruitoarea Cave

If you want to discover the first traces of prehistoric man from Moldova and Romania, you have to go through Duruitoarea Veche. Here is the Old Duruitoarea Grotto, which is known as an ancient settlement from the Stone Age. It consists of three rooms with a total length of 49 m, a width of 5-9 m. As a result of archaeological excavations here were discovered petrifies from the ice age and remains of an ancient civilization, which made it known throughout the world. In one of the caves, about 100 m from the northern end of the reef, were identified traces of a Paleolithic resort with traces of the existence of various prehistoric human cultures: flint tools, fossil animal bones, hearths, etc. The cave has three halls, with a total length of 49 meters and a width of 5-9 meters.

The presence of three authentic levels of Paleolithic human habitation - IV, III and II -, of the numerous fossil skeletal reminiscences of mammals and birds from the Pleistocene and of the different work and hunting tools made of flint and bone were established. The lithic archeological pieces and the bones of the animals from the dwellings of levels IV and III are attributed to the Lower Paleolithic, the Achaean era, the Tayak archeological culture. Their geological age is estimated at 160-100 thousand years, so levels IV and III are considered to be the oldest Paleolithic resorts in the Republic of Moldova.

The human resort of hunters from the Upper Paleolithic, discovered in the second level of habitation, is attributed to the culture of the local Middle Gravetian or early Epigravetian, ie approx. 20-18 thousand years BC

Numerous tools of flint, horn and bone were collected in the deposits of this level, but also about 10 thousand skeletal remains, in which a diversity of 54 species of mammals and 29 species of birds was established.

Also here was found a lower jaw with a few masses of a Paleolithic man of contemporary physical type.