Armenian cave to help puzzle out mystery of Homo sapiens' migration

The Armenian cave Aghitu-1 in Sisian will help puzzle out the mystery of migration of the Homo sapiens.

Director of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, Pavel Avetisyan, told ArmInfo that some layers dating back to the Stone Age (the Upper Paleolithic) have been preserved in this area. The samples taken for analysis demonstrate that there were people here 25-27 thsd years ago. But the cave also has more ancient layers, which are still to be studied.

Thus, Aghitu-1 can give important information about the version that the Homo sapiens migrated from Africa 50 thsd years earlier that it was considered. Experts think that the first camps of the Homo sapiens, who migrated from Africa, were in the southern part of Arab Peninsula. Aghitu-1 will help understand whether the migration of ancient people to Asian Near East was via territory of modern Iran or not.

The excavation in Aghitu-1 cave is carried out under an Armenian-German project.

arminfo.am/