İnkaya Cave Study Brings To Light 86,000-Year-Old Traces Of Human Life

Conny Waters - AncientPages.com - During the excavations at Inkaya Cave in the Turkish western province of Çanakkale, archaeologists discovered traces of human life dating back 86,000 years.

In the layers of the cave, the team also unearthed a number of tools made from flint and used for various purposes by Paleolithic people.

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Located within the borders of Bahadirli village in the Çan district, the Inkaya Cave was found during the Mugla and Çanakkale Provinces Survey conducted in 2016. The excavation works - conducted  under the direction of Ismail Özer, a lecturer at Ankara University, Department of Paleoanthropology - have been ongoing for six years.

Carried out by a team of 20 people, this year's excavation revealed that humans from the Middle Paleolithic Period resided in the region for extended periods due to the availability of flint raw material and water resources.

"Evidence of the Paleolithic era in Çanakkale was previously limited. Through our research, it became evident that Çanakkale is actually one of the very rich provinces in Türkiye in terms of the Paleolithic period," said excavation director Ismail Özer, in a press release.

Despite the numerous excavation studies in the country, the majority of these are conducted in open areas, and there are very few cave excavations currently ongoing in Turkish provinces. Most of these are concentrated in the southern regions, with only the Inkaya excavation continuing in Western Anatolia, Özer pointed out.

"Our work in this area has taken us to the Middle Paleolithic Period, roughly dating back from 250,000 to about 50,000 years ago. Our findings indicate that people lived here intensely during this period."

"The finds on the eastern slopes of the cave provide researchers with more precise information in terms of dating, taking them back to 86,000 years ago, Özer explained.

See also:

Paleolithic Workshop Unearthed In The İnkaya Cave In The Turkish Western Province Of Çanakkale

For now, the excavation works revealed only flint artifacts, and the team has not yet unearthed organic remnants, such as skeletal remains of the humans who lived in the cave during that period, animal bones or plant residues, which are the kitchen scraps humans consumed.

Stating that Inkaya Cave is essentially composed of a flint rock formation, Özer noted that the main reason people chose this place is that while crafting tools for their daily needs, they could also obtain the necessary raw materials from the cave.

"A toothed tool we found in the excavations could have been used for a purpose similar to today's saw. As for the tools with handles, they might have been inserted into a tree branch or perhaps into bone or horn using resin, after thinning out the handle part of the tool.," the researcher explained.

The edges would be worked on to make them functional. These tools could have been used for digging the soil or scraping the skin of animals. We will determine their specific purposes in the coming years through microscopic analysis of the stones.”

The excavations at the site of the Inkaya Cave are of great importance because it is the first and only cave known so far in Western Anatolia. No doubt, it will  shed light on the migration of people between Anatolia and the Balkans, during the Paleolithic period.

The Inkaya Cave excavations, were granted supported status by the Turkish Historical Society this year.

Written by Conny Waters - AncientPages.com Staff Writer