Aetokremnos

Aetokremnos is a rock shelter near Limassol on the southern coast of Cyprus. It is widely considered to host some of the oldest evidence of human habitation of Cyprus, dating to around 12,000 years ago. It is situated on a steep cliff site around 40 m (130 ft) above the Mediterranean Sea. The name means "Cliff of the eagles" in Greek. Around 40 m2 (430 sq ft) have been excavated and out of the four layers documented, the third is sterile.

The site, which is located on a British Royal Air Force base, was discovered in 1960 by an anonymous amateur, who reported the find to Stuart Swiny (director of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute in Nicosia). Swiny noted the existence of flint artifacts and a large number of hippo bones and that much of the site had eroded into the Mediterranean. Subsequent study and excavation of the site was conducted by Swiny and other archaeologists.

The site mainly contains bones of the Late Pleistocene endemic Cypriot pygmy hippopotamus, which are represented by the remains of over 370 individuals a much smaller amount of the Cyprus dwarf elephant representing the remains of at least 3 individuals, and artifacts (around 1,000 flints including thumbnail scrapers of the Mesolithic type), which resemble those produced by the Natufian culture of the mainland Levant. There are no bones that show marks of butchery, but an unusually high frequency (30%) of burned bones. Pygmy hippo bones are the most plentiful making up 74% of the bones, followed by fish remains (25%) and birds, mainly bustards. The presence of fallow deer (4 bones) and pig (13 bones) is puzzling, since these animals are only thought to have been introduced in the Neolithic period. According to the excavators, hearth remains are found in the layer containing the bone beds of the extinct megafauna. This would make it the oldest site on the island and evidence of Epipalaeolithic occupation. The original 31 radiocarbon dates put the date of the bones at c. 12,500 years Before Present (BP). and suggest a short-term occupation. These dates have been challenged as the excavators considered the nine bone dates to be the least reliable and did not agree with the dat

Archaeological site data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).