THE RED LADY OF PAVILAND

More than 30,000 years ago, the swirling sea below the cliffs near Mewslade Bay was once a vast plain, roamed by mammoths, rhinos and deer. The limestone was peppered with caves and would have provided shelter for these herds. Within the pear-shaped recess of Goat’s Hole Cave at Paviland, on the coast between Port Eynon and Rhossili, light gleams from a fissure onto the remains of an excavation carried out in January 1823 by the Reverend William Buckland, a professor of geology at Oxford University.

He discovered something extraordinary: the left side of a human skeleton, well-preserved and coated in red ochre, or iron oxide. The presence of periwinkle shells and mammoth ivory jewellery led Buckland to conclude that he had found a prominent noblewoman, possibly of Roman heritage. A devout Christian, Buckland believed that no human remains could predate the Biblical Great Flood, and so the skeleton was christened ‘The Red Lady of Paviland’.

A further excavation and re-examination of the skeleton revealed that it was actually a male, dating to the Upper Palaeolithic period and approximately 33,000 years old. He is thought to have been a Palaeolithic hunter, who stalked mammoth on a land bridge between Wales and Ireland, now swallowed up by the sea, although some sources believe his elaborate burial accoutrements mark him out as a shaman or mystic.

Since his discovery, the remains have been kept at Oxford University, but many on Gower would like to see him returned to his homeland.

The teardrop opening of Paviland Cave, where a skeleton was found, believed to have been a male who died at approximately 21 years of age.