Petralona Cave is located in a distance of 1 km from the Petralona village of the Chalkidiki peninsula, Macedonia. The cave is open to the public from 1979. Inside the Petralona Cave were discovered the fossilized archaic human traces of inhabitation by the renowned Dr, Aris Poulianos. The findings are estimated around 700.000 years and belongs to the oldest European ancestors that have been ever discovered till nowadays.
The cave became well-known in the 1960 for its paleodological and paleoanthropological findings, after the random discovery of the famous fossilized human skull from the villager Ch. Sariannidis. The value and the uniqueness of the discovery initiated a series of excavations in the interior and exterior of the cave. In 1968 and the period of 1974-1988 excavations took place inside the Petralona Cave from the paleoanthropologist Aris Poulianos.
In the Poulianos publications for the cave, there is a discussion for tools made from bone and stone. The temporary character of the publications unfortunately didn’t provide us with a deeper understanding of them. The findings are definitely important and they serve as the first testimonials of the Greek region inhabitation.
From an anthropologic point of view, the fossilized skull is the most prestigious discovery, nevertheless there isn’t unanimity among the specialists for its dating or even worse for its evaluation. The dominant opinions diverge significantly and the skull is considered that it belongs to a human that lived approximately 700.000 years ago according to one of them and 200.000 years ago according to the other.