Wales gets its 29,000-year-old 'lady' back

[Kara Sundstrom]

Wales gets its 29,000-year-old 'lady' back
Last Updated: 2:13am GMT 10/12/2007



A 29,000-year-old skeleton has been returned to its rightful home in Wales after being kept at Oxford University since it was discovered in the 1820s.

The Red Lady of Paviland got its name because it was buried with red ochre, but it was later discovered to be the remains of a man. It has gone on public display for the first time at the National Museum in Cardiff.

The skeleton is nine times older than Tutankhamun and the earliest formal human burial to have been found in western Europe. It was discovered in 1823 by the Rev William Buckland, a geology professor at Oxford University, who led an excavation at Goat's Hole Cave at Paviland on the Gower peninsula.

Ornaments and mammoth bones were also found, which have provided evidence about ritual, wild animals and the spread of man through Europe.

Twenty-two of the Gower's 95 caves are thought to have given shelter to pre-historic hunters 30,000 years ago.
 
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