In this video, I'm taking a look at the Cuina Turcului rock shelter, located on the Romanian bank of the Iron Gates Gorges of the Danube.
Like the Anatolian site of Pinarbasi, which I’ve recently looked into, this site has Neolithic archaeology but also Epi-Palaeolithic layers below, and the finds I’m showcasing in this video are really quite amazing.
Cuina Turcului is a well-defined rock shelter, 40 metres long and 25 metres high. Today, the site is sadly under the waters of the Iron Gates storage basin, but back in prehistory, it was above the height of the Danube River.
Below the Neolithic archaeology, there are two archaeological layers of note, both belonging to the Epigravettian culture of Europe.
The oldest, Layer One, dates to the end of the Bolling warm phase and into the Older Dryas, around 14,000 years ago, with the youngest, Layer Two, dating to the Younger Dryas, around 12,200 years ago.
Please note, the dates mentioned in the paper I’ve linked below are uncalibrated radiocarbon dates, not actual dates.
We can see a general trend that the rock shelter was used when the climate took dramatic downturns, which seems to be a common trend in various parts of the world in my research.
In this video, we get an insight into the lives of both Older and Younger Dryas people of Europe - what they ate, where they lived, their art, their jewellery and so on, so please watch and do leave a comment below.
All images are taken from Google Images and the below sources for educational purposes only.