Kozarnika Cave

Kozarnika Cave, also known as Kozarska Cave or Zhivanina Dupka, lies in Bulgaria's western Balkan Mountains, in Dimovo Municipality, Vidin Province, and has a total length of 210 metres.
Situated in the rocks 2.2 kilometres west-southwest of Gara Oreshets, beside the road to Belogradchik, it is an intriguing site of archaeological and geological value. Leaving the road, a steep path climbs approximately 250 metres to the cave entrance.
Archaeological excavations began in 1996, organised by the Archaeological Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Quaternary Geology and Prehistory in Bordeaux. Excavation directors Nikolay Sirakov and Jean-Luc Guadelli discovered an Upper Palaeolithic culture dating to the thirty-seventh–thirty-fourth millennium BC. This culture differs from contemporary finds at Temnata Dupka and Bacho Kiro, showing similarities to Western European cultures.
Kozarska Cave was inhabited during the Middle Palaeolithic, but the lowest layers, dated to 1.4 million years ago, are of greatest interest. A tooth belonging to a member of the genus Homo, probably Homo erectus, was found here and could be the oldest evidence of human presence in Europe. Bones from the Early Palaeolithic layers, dating to 1.2–1.4 million years ago and bearing series of incisions, are also disputed. These provoke debate because the possibility of symbolic thought before Homo sapiens, which appeared 50,000 years ago, is questioned.
Late Pleistocene deposits have yielded bone remains of forty-three bird species, including fossil species such as the prehistoric partridge Perdix paleoperdix and others now absent from the country's bird fauna. These finds provide information about mixed faunas in which different bird species lived together, and evidence of open grasslands combined with coniferous and deciduous woodland, forming a mosaic forest-steppe.