Vita Gazette- Europe’s oldest baby tomb discovered in the Arma Veirana cave in Liguria’s Savona state: Archaeologists have named the stone age baby ‘Snow’, which has been asleep for more than 10,000 years. The baby was 40 or 50 days old when died, according to DNA testing.

The incredible discovery that took place in Liguria has been published as a Scientific Report by an international research team led by Professor Jamie Hodgkins of the University of Colorado. The Arma Veirana cave is located in the province of Savona, in the Albenga hinterland. It constitutes one of the archaeological sites of international importance in terms of discovering the oldest populations living in Italy. Since the first excavations in 2015, thousands of artifacts have been found describing the extinction of Neanderthal males living in Liguria before the arrival of Homo Sapiens. For example, stone tools and food remain that were previously consumed by Neanderthals have been found here. The last one is the most exceptional of the finds from Arma Veirana: Snow is the oldest baby burial ever found in Europe. Tests revealed that Snow was 40 or 50 days old when died, that Snow’s mother was fed a grain diet, and that sexual equality was practiced at death ceremonies at that time.

The research was carried out by Stefano Benazzi of the University of Bologna, Fabio Negrino of the University of Genoa and Marco Peresani of the University of Ferrara, with support from the Sincrotone Elettra research center in Trieste. Snow’s discovery could help archaeologists fill the knowledge gap between the final stages of the Upper Paleolithic and the early Mesolithic, when humans began to flourish on Earth.