Narrow, worn stairs beneath the 11th-century Pembroke Castle in Wales lead into a shadowy cavern where early humans once sheltered from an environment populated with hippopotamus, mammoth, and woolly rhinoceros. Small excavations in 2024 revealed artifacts and tools used in the Upper Paleolithic Period. Currently, archaeologists at the University of Aberdeen are beginning a five-year project to chart the environmental conditions during early human occupation in Britain in greater detail. Dr. Rob Dinnis, project director, is enthusiastic about the project’s possibilities. “Despite the limited work done so far, we can already say that Wogan Cavern is a truly remarkable site,” said Dr. Dinnis. “Not only is there extremely rare evidence for early Homo sapiens, but there are also hints at even earlier human occupation, probably by Neanderthals.”
A Cave Where Mammoths, Hippos, and Early Humans Once Shared the Landscape
Wogan Cavern is unique because its floor and the sediment layers beneath have been undisturbed for a thousand years. According to the Pembroke Castle Trust, artifacts found in the cave indicate its use during the Roman period and much earlier, in prehistoric times. Recent limited examinations have provided evidence of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who used the cave 11,000 years ago. Earlier cave occupants during the last Ice Age left behind stone tools and the bones of a mammoth, reindeer, and a hippopotamus, which roamed Wales 120,000 years ago. Archaeologists believe that the cave sheltered some of the earliest Homo sapiens ever to occupy Britain.
Archaeologists excavating Wogan Cavern beneath Pembroke Castle in Wales. Previous excavations revealed remarkably well-preserved prehistoric sediments containing evidence of Ice Age animals, Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, early Homo sapiens, and possible Neanderthal occupation, prompting a major new five-year research project. (University of Aberdeen)
Why Wogan Cavern is a Rare Archaeological Time Capsule
Pembroke Castle was a medieval fortress founded in 1093 and known as the birthplace of King Henry VII (Tudor). The cavern was used as a storeroom during the Middle Ages, but the entrance was walled off in the early 13th century. The floor and the well-preserved layers of sediment below are an undisturbed time capsule. Aberdeen researchers plan to extract ancient DNA from fossils and the cave floor with a method that can identify species without needing a visible trace. Using high-resolution dating, they will reconstruct past ecosystems, track climate shifts, and determine human adaptations to environmental change.
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The site presents an opportunity to replace information and artifacts destroyed by Victorian archaeologists who conducted excavations without proper documentation or preservation methods. Dr. Diane Josefowicz points out that invasive techniques damaged archaeological layers. They also removed artifacts without context and even presented artifacts as presents to friends. These practices led to the loss of historical evidence.
Britain’s Earliest Homo sapiens - and Perhaps the Last Neanderthals
“Wogan Cavern provides a unique chance to use all the scientific techniques now available to archaeologists,” said Kate Britton, a specialist in science-based archaeology. Dinnis agrees:
"We are optimistic that the cave can chart a long sequence of human activity, from hunter-gatherers living there immediately after the last Ice Age around 11,500 years ago, back to Britain's earliest Homo sapiens between 45,000 and 35,000 years ago, and maybe also earlier traces likely left by Neanderthals.”
Reconstruction of early Homo sapiens hunter-gatherers in Wogan Cavern during the last Ice Age. (Abi Pate/Wogan Cavern Project)
Five Years of High Tech Archaeology Begin
Wogan Cavern has soil that has information similar to the rings on a tree. The soil strata preserve the environmental conditions surrounding the period rather than the evidence of continuous human occupation 120,000 years ago. New technological advances can reconstruct people through the environments they inhabited.
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Wogan Cavern Sediment Analysis Connected to the Changing Story of Human Migration in North America
Archaeologists have long believed they knew when the first humans entered North America. The traditional view described hunter-gatherers crossing the Bering Land Bridge near the end of the last Ice Age, approximately 15,000 years ago, and the migrants spread across the continents. Recently, however, with the increased use of the tools being used at Wogan Cavern such as DNA analysis, the extraction of ancient DNA, 3D imaging technology, and drone photography of remote areas, scientists are planning more analysis at sites in North America where they will look for new information about the expansion of early man across the continent at three sites: White Sands, New Mexico, California’s Channel Islands, and the Cerutti Mastodon Site.
Ancient Footprints Rewrite History of Human Migration
Fossilized human footprints at White Sands National Park, New Mexico. (National Park Service/Public Domain)
According to a study in Science Advances, ancient human tracks first excavated in 2019 at White Sands National Park, New Mexico, are approximately 23,000 years old. Continued research to confirm the dating could dramatically change the history of human migration to North America, placing humans on the continent during the Last Glacial Maximum, thousands of years earlier than previously believed. The research team from Bournemouth University and the U. S National Park Service used early radiocarbon dating of seeds and pollen found in the sediment layers surrounding the footprints. Critics argued that ancient carbon from the water absorbed by the plants could render false dates. University of Arizona archaeologist Vance Holliday retested ancient lakebed mud by radiocarbon dating, yielding ages of 20,700 to 22,400 years ago. Holliday pointed out that the sediment layers had proved consistent and reliable: “You get to the point where it’s really hard to explain all this away.”
The teams plan to continue seeking additional evidence to demonstrate that humans occupied North America far earlier than the Clovis-first model suggests.
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California's Channel Islands: Migration by Sea
Map of the California Channel Islands and Channel Islands National Park, California. (Lencer/CC BY-SA 3.0)
Archaeologists believe that early humans migrated by sea as well as land. The discovery of human remains dating to 13,000 years ago on Santa Rosa Island, part of California’s Channel Islands, suggests that humans traveled by coastal migration routes. The Arlington Springs Man supports the theory that migrants used land corridors and boats as they followed the kelp-rich shorelines.
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First Humans in North America: The Cerutti Mastodon Site
Mastodon femur heads from the Cerutti Mastodon Site museum display, San Diego County, California. (Owen Allen/CC BY 2.0)
Researchers at the San Diego Natural History Museum discovered the Cerutti Mastodon site in November 1992 during routine paleontological mitigation work. This site preserves 131,000-year-old hammerstones, stone anvils, and fragmentary remains — bones, tusks, and molars — of a mastodon that shows evidence of modification by early humans. Since its initial discovery, the Cerutti Mastodon site has been the subject of research by top scientists to date the fossils accurately and evaluate microscopic damage on bones and rocks that authors believe show signs of human activity, In 2014, U.S. Geological Survey geologist Dr. James Paces used state-of-the-art radiometric dating methods to determine that the mastodon bones were 130,700 years old, with a conservative error of plus or minus 9,400 years. “The distributions of natural uranium and its decay products both within and among these bone specimens show remarkably reliable behavior, allowing us to derive an age that is well within the wheelhouse of the dating system,” Dr. Paces said. Many questions remain under investigation.
“Modern humans shared the planet with other hominin species that are now extinct (such as Neanderthals) until about 40,000 years ago. If a human-like species was living in North America 130,000 years ago, it could be that modern humans didn’t get here first.”
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Reconstruction of an Upper Paleolithic Homo sapiens. (Matteo De Stefano/CC BY-SA 3.0)
Conclusion
Wogan Cavern is one example of how a range of archaeological discoveries is being analyzed using new technologies, expanding the study of early human activity. Scientists have begun to reconsider one of archaeology's biggest assumptions - evidence gathered from cave sites around the world has pushed the estimates of human activity back by hundreds of thousands of years. The kinds of human activity, migratory routes, and locations of exploration are debated avidly as discoveries transform the concept of migration from a single land-bridge journey to multiple crossings by land and sea over thousands of years. The use of advanced technology in Wogan Cavern provides a model for excavations in other archaeological sites.
Top Image: Pembroke Castle in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Archaeologists from the University of Aberdeen are excavating Wogan Cavern beneath the medieval fortress, where preserved sediments contain evidence of human occupation and environmental change stretching back more than 100,000 years. Source: University of Aberdeen
By Ramsey Hardin
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Scientists Create Highly Detailed 3D Model of Extinct Woolly Mammoth DNA | Science and Technology | Before It's News. https://beforeitsnews.com/science-and-technology/2024/07/scientists-cre…
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