The Paleolithic hunters from the Tatra caves were resourceful newcomers from the West.

Around 15,000 years ago, the Tatra Mountains attracted hunters, best known from Spain and France. They thoughtfully brought with them a supply of stone blades and tools, which they used for hunting animals, among other things. Polish archaeologists have discovered traces of this population in the Huczawy Cave.

Since the late 19th and early 20th centuries, scientists have attempted to study traces of Paleolithic human presence in the Tatra Mountains, spanning the period from 2.5 million to 8,000 years BC. However, these attempts have been unsuccessful. Only a few random finds in the Slovak and Polish regions have indicated that these mountains were inhabited as early as the Stone Age.

The situation changed in 2022, when a human camp dating back nearly 15,000 years was discovered in the Hučivá diera Cave in the Belianske Tatras in Slovakia. The discovery included blades of throwing weapons, bone needles, a fragment of a stone lamp, shell ornaments, and numerous bones of hunted animals, which lay among the remains of a large fire. Fauna remains indicate that the cave's inhabitants hunted, among other species, the Alpine ibex, now extinct in the Tatras.

The research was led by Prof. Paweł Valde-Nowak from the Institute of Archaeology of the Jagiellonian University, who, together with his team, is currently implementing the National Science Centre (NCN) project "Stone Age Man in the Caves of the Tatra Mountains." The research aims to explain the scale of human settlement in these mountains and how the dynamics of settlement varied with changes in the natural environment during the Pleistocene and the first millennia of the Holocene. The latest analyses on this topic have been published in the Journal of Anthropological and Archaeological Sciences .

"We also explored the cave above the Huczawa River this year. We found many artifacts, including another lamp with traces of burning. The number of animal remains has increased. We also deepened our excavation, and additional analyses confirmed the age of this settlement at 13,000 BC. The results from Huczawa are fascinating and groundbreaking. Never before have traces of Paleolithic people been found in the entire Tatra Mountains," Prof. Paweł Valde-Nowak told PAP. "We have captured a very impressive image of a Western European population—well known from Spain, France, Germany, and Switzerland—who, migrating to what is now Poland, entered the Tatra high-altitude zone."

The traces left behind indicate that these newcomers represented the Magdalenian culture, one of the late Paleolithic cultures characterized by the sophisticated production of tools from flint, horn and bone.

The peaks of the Tatra Mountains, visible from afar and covered in snow even in summer, likely encouraged prehistoric man to explore this environment. People explored these areas to hunt local animals, use the stone raw materials to craft blades and tools, use rock shelters, and perhaps also to satisfy ritual and spiritual needs.

"We suspect that the fire we discovered is the remains of a so-called technological fire. We believe it may have been a smokehouse or even a tannery. It's possible that the hides of hunted animals were prepared for further processing or transport. However, this is not yet settled; research is ongoing, and we are trying to clarify this," explained Professor Valde-Nowak.

Few of the existing Paleolithic sites in Poland, including those of the Magdalenian culture, have preserved traces of fire, and certainly not such visible ones. Hearths of similar size and used for a longer period, the PAP interviewee emphasized, were found at a Magdalenian site in Switzerland.

Researchers were intrigued by the fact that the people who inhabited the cave arrived equipped with stone blades brought from afar, as evidenced by the characteristics of the flint from which they were made. "However, when the resources of weapons and tools were depleted, they began making similar blades from local raw materials, which indicates a longer stay," said the archaeologist.

Researchers also wanted to conduct similar work on the Polish side of the Tatra Mountains. Professor Valde-Nowak undertook it in two caves: Obłazkowa Cave and Dziura Cave. "We carried out this work with a significant investment of effort and resources. We found excavated alluvial deposits (sediments on the cave floor - PAP), and soil from these alluvial deposits was poured in front of the caves to create terraces and trails for tourists. This significantly reduced the chances of discovering Paleolithic remains on the Polish side," he pointed out.

He explained that these were the legacy of a post-war program that aimed to open the Tatra Mountains to the public, but a side effect was the destruction of some of the structures. "A similar thing happened with the Huczawy Cave. It was also breached by speleologists in 2018, and had been explored before, and we also found some breaches there, but not on such a large scale," he said.

Science in Poland, Ewelina Krajczyńska-Wujec (PAP)

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