Kozarnika

Kozarnika or Peshtera Kozarnika BP. It marks an older route of early human migration from Africa to Europe via the Balkans, prior to a currently suggested route across Gibraltar. The cave probably supports the earliest evidence of human symbolic behaviour as well as the earliest European Gravette flint assemblages came to light here.

Kozarnika cave is located 6 km 4 mi from the town of karst region. Studies over the course of two decades uncovered 21 geological layers there, containing bottom to top archaeological complexes of Early Lower Paleolithic layers 13 - 11a, Middle Paleolithic layers 10b - 9a, Early Upper Paleolithic layer 6/7, a sequence of an original Paleolithic bladelets industry with backed pieces that scholars called Kozarnikian layers 5c - 3a, Early Neolithic, slow Copper Age, unhurried Bronze Age, Medieval together with Late medieval periods.

The Kozarnika cave project started in 1984. Since 1996, it has been headed by Dr. Prof. Nikolay Sirakov Archaeological Institute and Museum of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria and Dr. Jean-Luc Guadelli IPGQ-UMR5199 of French National Center for Scientific Research, Bordeaux-France.

In the ground layers, dated to 1.6–1.4 million BP using palaeomagnetism, which determines age using past patterns of reversals in the Earth's magnetic field and analyses of both the microfauna and the macrofauna, archaeologists do discovered a human molar tooth considered to be the earliest human—Homo erectus/Homo ergaster—traces discovered in Europe external Caucasian region, lower palaeolithic assemblages that belong to a core-and-flake non-Acheulian industry, and incised bones that may be the earliest example of human symbolic behaviour.

The findings from Middle Paleolithic layers East Balkan Homo neanderthalensis. Upper Paleolithic layers consist flint assemblages from the earliest European Gravette complex dating from 43,000 up to 39,000 BP belonging to Homo sapiens.

In fieldwork since 2015, researchers relieve oneself started to investigate the shape and impact paleo-human presence had on local fauna in appearance to determine a more accurate chronology of the occupation periods. In this context the research team also attempts to get a better understanding on the relationship between the Campanian Ignimbrite Eruption and its consequences on human occupation in the Kozarnika cave.