Oldest known human settlement in Valencian lands.
The Bolomor cave (Tavernes de la Valldigna) is located on the southern slope of a wide valley, deep in the mountains, known as La Valldigna, facing west to east at a low altitude and flanked by the Sierra de las Cruces and the Mondúver Massif.
The archaeological findings correspond to the ancient Palaeolithic period and concern the remains associated with the oldest known human settlement in Valencian lands. The research has documented an exceptional and unique prehistoric record of the use of bonfires over 250,000 years, evidence of controlled fire that is among the oldest in Europe.
The morphological evolution of La Valldigna during the Quaternary was determined by the oscillations in sea level and sedimentary deposition, aspects which have allowed the successive landscapes and variations in the coastline to be reconstructed. The current morphology corresponds to low coasts originating from areas of wetlands and small lagoons.
The Mondúver Massif has a paleo-landscape with forms typical of a tropical karst with conical depressions, isolated hills and pinnacles. This karstification and its morphoclimatic systems are attributed to the warm climate of the Upper Miocene-Pliocene, which generated an ancient humid tropical Mediterranean karst in the Tertiary and which we can observe today, together with the later Pleistocene modifications.
The Bolomor cave is an archaeological site located 2 km southeast of the town of Tavernes de la Valldigna, on the northern slope of the Mondúver Massif. Its excavation and research has been carried out since 1989 with the support of the Museum of Prehistory of Valencia, the Provincial Council and the General Directorate of Heritage of the Generalitat Valenciana.
The excavation of the cavity has yielded abundant prehistoric materials: lithic remains, bones, combustion structures, as well as hominid fossils. The site is particularly important because of the extensive chronostratigraphy that includes the middle Quaternary between 100,000 and 350,000 years before the present.
The archaeological findings correspond to the ancient Palaeolithic period and concern the remains associated with the oldest known human settlement in Valencian lands. The research has documented an exceptional and unique prehistoric record of the use of fires over 250,000 years, evidence of controlled fire that is among the oldest in Europe. An important part of the way of life of these ancient hominids has been discovered for the first time at this site with the incorporation of new behaviours in the use of food resources and patterns of food acquisition.
The Bolomor cave is an important site on the Mediterranean coast for discovering the origins and characteristics of the European Palaeolithic settlement, the ways of life of the Neanderthals and other hominids that preceded them. Bolomor is a world reference for the study of the European Middle Pleistocene and the origin of the behaviour of the Neanderthal lineage.
