Bones of cave animals and traces of a Neanderthal settlement believed to be the oldest in Slovenia have been found in a karst cave in the Ilirska Bistrica area in the southwest of the country. They are estimated to be up to 170,000 years old.

Hidden high above the overhanging cliffs near the village of Šembije, Uršnja Luknja is a paradise for prehistory explorers. It is a small cave where the bones of several cave animals, including a rhinoceros, have been found.

Not even 20 metres long, the cave contains a rich legacy of the period between the last two ice ages.

Being a bit difficult to access, only a small portion of the cave has been explored, but experts from the regional museum in Postojna say it is clear the Neanderthals lived there.

"We are convinced of that after finding their traces, because many of the bones have cuts on them from the stone tools they used to cut meat," Slavko Polak, a biologist and curator at the Notranjska Museum, told TV Slovenija

A uranium-thorium dating has shown that these are undoubtedly Neanderthal sediments, he said.

Older than the Neanderthal flute

Polak, who found a cave bear tooth in the cave as a child, told the Slovenian Press Agency that explorations of the cave had so far been rare.

But when they got the permission to excavate a small probe hole, they found the finds are between 150 and 170 thousand years old.

"It is a period before the last ice age, which means that it is an early Neanderthal, twice as old as the one whose flute was found at the Divje Babe site," Polak said, referring to what is believed to be the oldest musical instrument in the world.

The 55,000-year-old flute, made of a cave bear bone, was found in the Divje Babe cave in western Slovenia in 1995. It is now exhibited at the National Museum in Ljubljana.

Back in 2021, experts published an article about the Uršnja Luknja cave containing bones of a cave bear and other species of Pleistocene animals, and quartz artefacts that served as tools for early prehistoric people have been found there in recent years.

Bones cemented in gravel, loam and clay

Due to little research in the cave, the sediment is still mostly intact, and the location is an exceptionally attractive for exploration due to its interesting genesis, as the old layers can be accessed in a fairly simple way.

As they have to process a lot of material, which includes rhinoceros and Pleistocene porcupine finds, no new research is currently planned, but the procedure to recognise the cave as an archaeological site has been initiated.

Polak says the public will be informed about the new finds after the examination has been completed. The artefacts already examined were put on display this year in Prem Castle near Ilirska Bistrica.

He advised against unauthorised exploration of the cave. Many people imagine the bones are just lying around the cave, but this is not the case. "The bones are virtually cemented between gravel, loam or clay."

The cave is named after a recluse called Urša, who lived there in the mid-19th century. The first archaeological research there was conducted in 1880, and more extensive exploration took place between 1982 and 2015, yielding 252 fossils of animal bones and teeth.