Centro visite della Grotta di Lamalunga, Altamura

The Lamalunga cave, in the territory of Altamura, is characterized by a system of karst cavities and narrow tunnels.  It is accessed through a swallow hole about ten meters deep, after which, following a path of about sixty meters, one encounters 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); it is intact in skeletal structure and in excellent state of preservation. On his skull are both archaic traits and those morphological transformations, stabilized in Neanderthals, that allow it to be placed in the group of European middle Pleistocene fossils, between the forms of Homo erectus (400 thousand years) and the forms of Homo neanderthalensis (85 thousand years), in a transitional phase estimated around 250 thousand years ago.