Payviland Red Lady

The red lady from Payviland ( English Red Lady of Paviland ) - the almost completely preserved male skeleton of the Upper Paleolithic era ( Aurignac culture ), painted with red ocher .

He was discovered in 1823 by priest William Buckland in one of the Payvilland limestone caves on the Gower Peninsula in south Wales . It dates back to 27,000 year BC. e. (29 thousand years ago, uncalibrated dating). ^[one]

Left: view of the skeleton from the bottom. Right: view of the skeleton from the upper side

When Buckland discovered the skeleton, he made the wrong conclusion about both sex and burial time. As a creationist , ^[2] Buckland believed that human remains could not be older than the Flood , for this reason he greatly reduced the age of the find, dating back to the time of the Roman Empire . Buckland also mistook the skeleton for a female, as it was found along with various decorative items, including a shell necklace and bone jewelry. These jewelry, as well as the red color in which the skeleton was painted, led Buckland to suggest that the remains belonged to a Roman prostitute or witch.

Later, the “lady” was defined as a man of no more than 21 years old. These are the most ancient human remains of an anatomically modern type in Great Britain , as well as the most ancient ceremonial burial in Western Europe . Together with the skeleton, a mammoth skull was found , later lost. Perhaps the buried was a tribal leader.

Studies of the XX century showed that a man lived about 26 thousand years ago (26350 ± 550 BP, OxA-1815) at the end of the Upper Paleolithic . A later study by Dr. Thomas Higham of Oxford University and Dr. Roger Jacobi of the British Museum suggests that the skeleton may be 4 thousand years older ^[3] .

Although the find was made on the coast, during the burial, the cave was apparently removed from the sea by about 120 km, on a hill above the plain now flooded by the sea. In the light of the now obsolete hypothesis that the remains were 26 thousand years old, it was previously assumed that the Red Lady lived at the time of the last glaciation (Devensian glaciation), when the ice cap was very close to the burial sites, and that the climate resembled the modern Siberian , and the vegetation was of the tundra type . However, according to the new dating, the buried lived in a warmer period. Analysis of bone protein shows that the food of the deceased was 15% -20% composed of fish, that is, the tribe of the deceased led a semi-nomadic lifestyle, since the sea coast was at that time removed from the place of burial. Other foods apparently included mammoth , woolly rhinoceros, and reindeer .

When the skeleton was discovered, Wales did not have its own suitable museum for its storage; for this reason, the skeleton was sent for storage at Oxford University , where Buckland was a professor. In December 2007, the skeleton was transferred for a year to the Cardiff National Museum . In subsequent excavations at the sites where the skeleton was discovered, numerous - more than 4 thousand - flint tools, teeth and bones, needles and bracelets were found, which are currently in the and the Cardiff National Museum .