The cave is hidden below a medieval castle in the heart of the German town of Ranis. Human remains have just been identified there, confirming in turn that different groups of Homo sapiens occupied a vast area north of the Alps more than 47,000 years ago.
The results of these new excavations, carried out by the paleoanthropologist and professor at Collège de France Jean-Jacques Hublin, are presented in three articles published in the journals Nature and Nature Ecology & Evolution.