We managed to visit three of the four caves proposed under the name “Neanderthal fossil caves in Wallonia” in April 2023 : Spy, Scladina and Goyet.

Spy cave was already reviewed : as mentioned, this is more a shelter than a cave. It is well sign-posted from the car park and can be accessed at any time following a pleasant and easy walk in a wood. On that Sunday morning, the other people we met were doing some exercise or just enjoying the sunshine, and the cave could easily be missed or overlooked. There is nothing left from Neanderthal, just a plaque remembering those who discovered pieces of skeleton here (the famous “Homme de Spy” was found in 1886). We did not visit the nearby museum : its limited opening time did not fit well with our agenda.

Scladina (see picture) was by far the most interesting of the three caves, in my opinion, for still being an active archaeological site. Tours are by pre-booking only (25 people maximum per group) and usually operate on Sundays – and on some bank holidays : one tour in the morning in Dutch, one tour in the afternoon (at 2 pm) in French ; we joined the latter, with twelve other visitors. Check the website for detailed agenda and booking. You pay only upon arrival (cash or credit card). The tour was guided by a Scientist who was very nice and was able to explain her work with simple words, so even the kids felt interested. Successive overflows from nearby river and deposits of mud filled the cave for the last hundreds of millennia or so : one by one, each of these dozens of ground layers are now carefully excavated. This very long and continuous sequence of deposits make Scladina one of the reference centres for climate and flora in Northen Europe. Discoveries include many bones from Neanderthal skeletons, notably in 1993 the lower jaw of a young Neanderthal girl about 10 years old when she died, but also some teeth, biface stones etc. Remains from animals are the most common – cave bear teeth for example : some can still be seen in-situ. The tour lasts approximately 90 minutes. Some of the findings can be seen in nearby “Le Phare” museum in Andenne.

Just a few kilometres from Scladina, we arrived on time at Goyet caves for our second visit of the afternoon. These caves have been closed during the last years but are now open again. Pre-booking is required as well, although here again our group did not reach the maximum number of visitors. There is usually one Dutch and one French tour each day of opening. This visit was more a kind of (reasonable) underground “adventure trip”. Our guide invited us to follow him through narrow natural corridors, up and down in the cave, showing stalagmites and stalactites here and there. This was pleasant but very far from marvels from caves in Slovenia or in the South of France. The second part of the visit is the “pre-historical” part of the tour, ie the cave where Neanderthal remains were found – as early as 1868. Here again, nothing is left, excavations have ended, so the guide was just telling us about the findings from the past – including a much debated skull : is it from a young wolf or the first form of a dog? The ground layer it was found inside would make it the oldest dog in the world. It seems no definitive conclusion was reached yet… Until recently, it was possible to freely access the entrance of these caves from the outside (still, the opening of the caves are kept closed by grids), but the rocks above have been deemed unsafe, so this external path is now closed and the only possibility to enter the caves is through the man-dug entrance that is used for the guided tour, a few hundred meters further.

It is difficult to say if these caves should become a WHS. There is not much left from Neanderthal times here, but there is no “outstanding” place for this period of Prehistory somewhere else in the world either. The interest of these caves in Belgium is that some of the first remains from Neanderthal were found here and fuelled the Scientists discussions that led to the identification of this distinct human species. At the end of the day, our experience as visitors was very much the same as our visit to the ice caves in Germany a few years ago, and our pictures look alike. As for the inscription, we let it to the Experts to decide.