Long Hole, also spelled Longhole, is a limestone cave on the south coast of the

Gower Peninsula Gower ( cy, Gŵyr) or the Gower Peninsula () in southwest Wales, projects towards the Bristol Channel. It is the most westerly part of the historic county of Glamorgan. In 1956, the majority of Gower became the first area in the United Kingdom ...

between Paviland and

Port Eynon Port Eynon (also spelt Port Einon, Porth Einon in Welsh) is a village and Community (Wales), community within the City and County of Swansea, Wales, located on the far south tip of the Gower Peninsula within the designated Area of Outstanding Natu ...

. It is relatively small, measuring about deep after several excavations. It was first excavated in 1861 by Colonel E. R. Wood. Wood found evidence of a lithic assemblage and faunal remains. The faunal remains included cave hyena,

reindeer Reindeer (in North American English, known as caribou if wild and ''reindeer'' if domesticated) are deer in the genus ''Rangifer''. For the last few decades, reindeer were assigned to one species, ''Rangifer tarandus'', with about 10 sub ...

Woolly rhinoceros The woolly rhinoceros (''Coelodonta antiquitatis'') is an extinct species of rhinoceros that was common throughout Europe and Asia during the Pleistocene epoch and survived until the end of the last glacial period. The woolly rhinoceros was a me ...

mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus'', one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks an ...

, straight-tusked elephant and wild horse. A second excavation was conducted in 1969 by J. B. Campbell. Analysis of the evidence from the two excavations, including sediment and pollen as well as the lithic evidence, has identified Long Hole as an Aurignacian site contemporary with and related to the site at Paviland, evidence of the first modern humans in Britain.

References

{{Gower Peninsula Caves of Wales Aurignacian Limestone caves Archaeological sites in Wales