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

Gower Peninsula The Gower Peninsula (), or simply Gower (), is a peninsula in the South West Wales, south-west of Wales. It is the most westerly part of the historic county of Glamorgan, and is now within the City and County of Swansea. It projects towards th ...

between Paviland and Port Eynon. 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 The reindeer or caribou (''Rangifer tarandus'') is a species of deer with circumpolar distribution, native to Arctic, subarctic, tundra, taiga, boreal, and mountainous regions of Northern Europe, Siberia, and North America. It is the only re ...

Woolly rhinoceros The woolly rhinoceros (''Coelodonta antiquitatis'') is an extinct species of rhinoceros that inhabited northern Eurasia during the Pleistocene epoch. The woolly rhinoceros was a member of the Pleistocene megafauna. The woolly rhinoceros was larg ...

mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus.'' They lived from the late Miocene epoch (from around 6.2 million years ago) into the Holocene until about 4,000 years ago, with mammoth species at various times inhabi ...

straight-tusked elephant The straight-tusked elephant (''Palaeoloxodon antiquus'') is an extinct species of elephant that inhabited Europe and Western Asia during the Middle Pleistocene, Middle and Late Pleistocene. One of the largest known elephant species, mature full ...

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 The Aurignacian () is an archaeological industry of the Upper Paleolithic associated with Cro-Magnon, Early European modern humans (EEMH) lasting from 43,000 to 26,000 years ago. The Upper Paleolithic developed in Europe some time after the L ...

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