Talk:Petralona Cave

Please correct the dates
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/454101/Petralona-skull http://universalium.academic.ru/283132/Petralona_skull — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.33.14.209 (talk) 14:07, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Content is rubbish.
Be warned. The claim that the skull is 700,000 years old is NOT substantiated by the second reference, which places it at about 160,000 years before present. I assume the edit was done maliciously and with the intent to mislead, because the contradiction between the claim (here) and the actual paper is so clear. In addition, the first reference in that section (Discovery) claims a conspiracy exists and tells readers "you be the judge". This is yellow journalism, not science reporting. (I have no personal opinion about the evidence; I'm neither familiar with the skull, its dating, nor the Petralona cave. However claims that the european homo species 'originated' in Greece are ridiculous: simply put there is overwhelming evidence that contradicts that silly assertion.)Abitslow (talk) 18:27, 5 January 2015 (UTC)


 * True! Confusion rules. On top of that, there is more focus on the skull than on the cave. I see what i can add and give it a bit more structure. ATB Wikirictor (talk) 14:28, 14 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Old World Archaeology Study Unit is "a thematic stamp collecting group" and its journal Old World Archaeologist is about "archaeological subjects depicted on postage stamps and other postal materials." The content cited from it via boneandstone.com, should not receive the same weight as scholarly publications or the Smithsonian Institution listed below.
 * A A Google Scholar search for the species name "archanthropus europaeus petraloniensis" yields 10 results among which abstracts of three show the progress during the 1980s and 1990s in dating:
 * A 1982 abstract states: "recent studies [...] combined with new developments in [...] dating, have shown that the fourfold schemes are oversimplified. This paper critically reviews some of the dating evidence from sites with hominid remains generally considered as Middle Pleistocene (ca. 700,000–128,000 BP). The hominid and archaeological remains are shown to require independent dating and a cautious approach is adopted towards the use of mammalian faunal remains as chronological indicators. [...] At a time of transition from an old framework to new correlations, it is inevitable that some conclusions seem tentative and others rather negative."
 * A December 1983 abstract states: "Further study of the prepared hominid cranium has provided new data. Morphological and metrical comparisons still relate the Petralona specimen to Middle Pleistocene hominids, rather than to those of the Lower or Upper Pleistocene. The fossil,[...] may represent a form not far removed from the common ancestor of Neanderthals and 'modern' humans, which explain difficulties in the classification of these hominids. Evidence for a Lower Pleistocene [>730,000 years (730 ky)] or late Middle Pleistocene (c.200 ky) age for the hominid is discussed, but an age of somewhat more than 350ky, but certainly less than 730 ky, is favoured by the author."
 * A March 1996 abstract states: "Two electron spin resonance (ESR) dating studies of the late 1970s and early 1980s on speleothems associated with the Petralona hominid cranium yielded age estimates of 350–700 ka and 200 ka, respectively. These dating results are re-assessed in view of more than a decade of progress in ESR dating. The re-assessed values are in reasonable agreement with some independent U-series results on the same material, suggesting an age of 150–250 ka for the speleothems bracketing the cranium." The author also wrote about this in a 1997 book but the abstract for his chapter is not informative.
 * It is quite clear that the older dating in the article is not current but outdated information. For example, the Smithsonian Institution webpage (last updated on 2015-12-21), which is already cited in the article, brackets the age of the skull at 150ka and 350ka and identifies the species as Homo heidelbergensis. The Grün 1996 (200ka±50ka) and Smithsonian (250ka±100ka) dating is similar to each other.
 * A Google Book search to verify a quote "encrusted by brown calcite soon after the death of the individual", added in, shows that in that 1983 quote "The age of the skull, which was apparently encrusted by brown calcite soon after the death of the individual concerned, has been variously estimated as between 70,000 and 700,000 years."
 * The obsolete Poulianos dating should not be given prominence in two lead paragraphs and replaced with the current dating and the Aris Poulianos article should be updated to reflect that his dating is obsolete.


 * Jason Colavito, a debunker of pseudoarchaeology, wrote in 2014 that Poulianos is a controversial Soviet-trained archaeologist. Poulianos, who "declared that the skull was 700,000 years old, a distinct species, and the ancestor of Europeans, whom he believed did not evolve in Africa," also propogates other fringe theories such as humans first evolving in Greece, that modern Greeks are not related to Slavs or Turks, "and the only outside influence on them was the adoption of an Indo-European language in the Mycenaean period. This had very important political consequences in Greece, which had attempted to assert genetic continuity with the glories of ancient Greece and to minimize medieval and early modern occupations by Slavic and Turkish groups." "According to Poulianos, the invaders left absolutely no legacy whatsoever despite more than a thousand years of interactions between peoples on the Balkan Peninsula." Poulianos "also 'confirmed' that Albanians and Macedonians were similarly indigenous in their own countries, which conveniently supported Communist claims about nationalism. Somehow, amazingly, ancient peoples almost exactly conformed to modern political borders" for Poulianos, Colavito remarked. Maybe Poulianos's dating should be labeled as WP:FRINGE?


 * –BoBoMisiu (talk) 17:01, 23 December 2015 (UTC)


 * We can't label him fringe, although if sources describe him as such we could use them. However, there is far too much about him in the lead, which is meant to be a summary of the article, see WP:LEAD. Doug Weller  talk 19:22, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Proposed split (May 2018)
Dbachmann proposed splitting the Petralona skull section out to Petralona skull. I agree. It is a distinct and separately notable subject, and there's enough content here to merit a standalone article. TJRC (talk) 21:18, 9 May 2018 (UTC)


 * It seems pretty clear, the proper consideration of the date if left in the cave article would take over the whole article. This specialized topic certainly needs its own article. The cave contained a lot of other content as well, and it needs its own consideration. The new skull article needs a volunteer and he or she needs to be left alone to do it right.Botteville (talk) 13:46, 9 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I agree as well. Not that the present article is too large, but because the Petralona skull, when properly discussed, takes up a disproportionate part of this article. Debresser (talk) 17:55, 30 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Another related entry is, — Paleo Neonate  – 16:14, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * And more to revise are, Anthropological Museum of Petralona, Petralona, Chalkidiki. There also exist a few links to unexisting Archanthropus europaeus petraloniensis (and Archanthropus is a redirect to this article).  — Paleo  Neonate  – 16:18, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 5 June 2022

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: moved as requested per the discussion below. Dekimasu よ! 05:04, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Petralona cave → Petralona Cave – Request to capitalize cave to be consistent with everything else in Category:Caves of Greece. Florificapis (talk) 04:15, 5 June 2022 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support its a specific cave not a generic class.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 08:42, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Support. Clearly a proper name. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:47, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Support, proper name --Seggallion (talk) 16:11, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Source date problem
In the subsection Layer 10, we have the text:
 * "Today, most academics who have analyzed the Petralona remains classify the hominid as Homo erectus.[Ref 6] However, the Archanthropus of Petralona has also been classified as a Homo heidelbergensis.[Ref 16]"
 * Ref 6 is firmly dated to 1997, but Ref 16 is only shown as having been retrieved in 2015, giving the impression that it postdates 6 by some 18 years. However, the actual pdf is undated, and the latest reference within it is 2002, suggesting it is likely not much more recent than that, or only around 6 years more recent than Ref 6.
 * I feel this should be clearly indicated, but am not sure how best that can be done. Ideas? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.199.210.77 (talk) 21:30, 20 May 2023 (UTC)