Iroungou Cave is a burial cave located near the city of Mouila in the

Ngounié Province Ngounié is a province of south-central Gabon covering an area of . Its capital is Mouila. At the 2013 census it had 100,838 inhabitants. In 2016, its governor was Benjamin Nzigou. History The province is named after the Ngounié River, which ...

Gabon Gabon (; ; snq, Ngabu), officially the Gabonese Republic (french: République gabonaise), is a country on the west coast of Central Africa. Located on the equator, it is bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the nort ...

. It is an

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology a ...

dating from

pre-colonial Africa The history of Africa begins with the emergence of hominids, archaic humans and — around 300–250,000 years ago—anatomically modern humans (''Homo sapiens''), in East Africa, and continues unbroken into the present as a patchwork of d ...

. It is a collective burial site with the remains of at least 28 people, and hundreds of iron, copper and shell artefacts. The site has no equivalent in

West central Africa West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...

Geology

The Iroungou cave is formed in

neoproterozoic The Neoproterozoic Era is the unit of geologic time from 1 billion to 538.8 million years ago. It is the last era of the Precambrian Supereon and the Proterozoic Eon; it is subdivided into the Tonian, Cryogenian, and Ediacaran periods. It is prec ...

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

, from the schisto-calcaire series.

History of investigations

Iroungou cave has been discovered by

Olivier Testa Olivier Testa (born April 1, 1977) is a cave explorer, known for his discovery of the orange cave-dwelling crocodiles of Gabon, the Iroungou burial cave in Gabon, the discovery of unexpected caves in the volcanic Bamboutos mountains in Cameroo ...

and Richard Oslisly in 2018. The main chamber of the cave is accessible through a natural shaft 15 meters deep. When exploring the cave, the

speleologist Speleology is the scientific study of caves and other karst features, as well as their make-up, structure, physical properties, history, life forms, and the processes by which they form ( speleogenesis) and change over time (speleomorphology) ...

reported hundreds of human bones scattered on the ground from at least 28 individuals, and numerous iron and copper artefacts. Since then, a series of archeological missions and excavations conducted by the CNRS in conjunction with the

National Agency for National Parks The National Agency for National Parks (French: ''Agence Nationale des Parcs Nationaux'') is the authority in Gabon Gabon (; ; snq, Ngabu), officially the Gabonese Republic (french: République gabonaise), is a country on the west coast o ...

have inventoried 512 artefacts. Only superficial artifacts have been recovered.

Recovered artifacts

During 4 missions in 2019-2020, 486

iron Iron () is a chemical element with Symbol (chemistry), symbol Fe (from la, Wikt:ferrum, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 element, group 8 of the periodic table. It is, Abundanc ...

and 26

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

objects, 127 Atlantic marine shells (15 of them being pierced), and 39 pierced carnivore teeth have been recovered. Metallic artifacts consist of currency hoes, bracelets, rings, knives, spears, iron bells (gongs), and a new type of object, eight 70cm-long, spatula-shaped forged iron rods, never found elsewhere in Africa.

Age of the burials

Preliminary datings have been carried on twenty bone samples from Iroungou skeletons using carbon-14. The inhumations spans between the 14th and 15th century AD. The corpses where thrown or lowered from the top of the shaft. In all of the

skull The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium and the mandible. In humans, th ...

s in the cave, none have their upper

incisor Incisors (from Latin ''incidere'', "to cut") are the front teeth present in most mammals. They are located in the premaxilla above and on the mandible below. Humans have a total of eight (two on each side, top and bottom). Opossums have 18, wher ...

s. The teeth have been removed during the life of the individual, as an ethnic marker or a social role marker.

Gallery

References

{{Navbox prehistoric caves Caves of Gabon Limestone caves Archaeological sites in Gabon African archaeology History of Central Africa 2018 archaeological discoveries Archaeological sites of Central Africa