Northwest Europe, Britain (Britanniae), 05B WALES, Palaeolithic Period (230-11.7 kya) 

A 230,000-year-old Neanderthal upper jaw fragment has been found at Bontnewydd, Denbighshire, near St Asaph, in a cave on the northeast side of the River Elwy valley. This site is the most northwesterly in Europe at which the remains of an early hominan have been found. Late Neanderthal handaxes between 60,000 and 35,000 years old were discovered at Coygan Cave, Carmarthenshire.

Paviland Cave, or the Goat’s Hole Cavern, on the southwest coast of the Gower peninsula, Swansea, was occupied episodically from about 30,000 to 10,000 years ago. Artefacts are mostly Aurignacian, but include examples from the earlier Mousterian period and the later Gravettian and Creswellian periods. It also produced a red-ochre covered skeleton dated to 29 kya, the oldest known ceremonial burial in western Europe. At the time it was thought to be of a woman and thus became known colloquially as the ‘Red Lady of Paviland’ but subsequent study showed it to be that of a young adult male.

Rock art, thought to represent a reindeer, was discovered on the back wall of the Cathole Cave on the Gower peninsula in Pembrokeshire, has been radiocarbon dated to 14 kya and is said to be the oldest rock art in Britain if not in all of northwestern Europe.

Settlement was apparently intermittent due to periods of cooling and warming and the accompanying advance and retreat of the ice. Wales appears to have been abandoned from about 21,000 until 13,000 years ago, with a burial found at Kendrick’s Cave on the Great Orme peninsula, Conwy dating to about 12,000 years ago.