Lamalunga Cave Visitor Center, Altamura

The Lamalunga Cave, located in the territory of Altamura, features a system of karst cavities and narrow tunnels.  It is accessed through a sinkhole about ten meters deep, beyond which, after a path of about sixty meters, you encounter an extraordinary archaeological find known as the Altamura Man, a fossil skeleton of a man who lived in the middle-upper Pleistocene.

 The hominid is identified as an adult male (160-165 centimeters); the skeletal structure is intact and in excellent condition. His skull displays both archaic traits and morphological transformations, stabilized in Neanderthals, allowing it to be placed among the European middle Pleistocene fossil group, between forms of Homo erectus (400 thousand years ago) and Neanderthal Homo forms (85 thousand years ago), during a transitional phase estimated at around 250 thousand years ago.