The importance of Croatian Pleistocene hominin finds in the study of human evolution

Abstract

In this chapter, we discuss Croatian sites that have yielded human skeletal remains from the Pleistocene. These include the well-known Neandertal localities Hušnjakovo (at Krapina) and Vindija cave, as well as the Late Upper Paleolithic hominin fossil site Šandalja II cave in Istria. The Krapina site played an important role in the historical development of paleoanthropology and is still the Neandertal site with the largest known minimum number of skeletal individuals to date. Finds from Vindija cave belong to one of the latest Neandertal groups in Europe and provide data for the study of both their behavioral, as well as biological characteristics (including genomics studies). The Šandalja II cave in Istria is the only site in Croatia with direct association of human skeletal finds and the late Paleolithic, an Epigravettian industry, providing us with data on the anatomy and behavior of the Late Paleolithic inhabitants of this region.