Petralona, Chalkidiki

Petralona (Πετράλωνα) is a small locality in Chalkidiki, Macedonia, Greece. It is 6 km N-W of Triglia and 35 km S-E of Thessaloniki. Its altitude is 270 m.

It is famous for the eponymous cave at about 1 km from the village, the Petralona cave in which was discovered one of the earliest European humanoids.

Prehistory
The Petralona cave, at the foot of Mount Katsika, was discovered in 1959 by a local looking for a spring. In it was found in 1960 the Petralona skull, extremely well preserved, dated to more than 700,000 years. It was named Archanthropus europaeus petraloniensis (Poulianos, 1976). This is considered as one of the oldest European Homo erectus specimen found so far.