Vindija Cave

Vindija Cave is an archaeological site in northern Croatia that has been linked to Neanderthals and modern humans. It is located in the municipality of Donja Voa. Three of these Neanderthals were chosen as the key sources for the Neanderthal genome project's first draft sequence.

The cave lies around 20 kilometers (12 miles) west of Varadin and 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) north of Ivanec. Neanderthals are thought to have visited the cave 40,000 years ago, almost 8000 years before modern humans arrived in that part of Europe.

In terms of general anatomy, the hominid fossils of level 3G are unmistakably Neanderthal, however they share a number of features with anatomically contemporary Europeans rather than the classic Neanderthal. The brow ridge is thinner and less projecting, the face is smaller, and the front teeth are narrower. Though some have attributed these discrepancies to the Vindija Neanderthals' tiny size, a 1995 research found that, while small, the Vindija Neanderthals were comparable in size to more morphologically classic Neanderthals such as La Ferrassie 2, Shanidar 1 and 4, and Tabun 1. The Vindija Neanderthals were most likely transitioning from a robust to a more gracile shape.

Location: Hrvatsko Zagorje, Croatia