Place
Con Moong Cave
A cave in Thanh Hoa with over ten metres of cultural deposits, recording one layer of occupation after another.
At a glance
- Location
- In Thanh Hoa; together with Hoa Binh this is the region holding 106 of the 145 Hoabinhian sites known in Vietnam1
- Type
- A cave, cited as the example of how deep in time the cultural deposits of the northern caves run1
- Area
- Cultural deposits more than 10 m deep1
- Dates
- A sample from the bottom of the deposits dates to some 74,000 years ago1
About the place
Archaeology finds
The depth of time inside the northern caves is striking, and Con Moong in Thanh Hoa is the example given: the cultural deposits run more than ten metres deep, and a sample from the bottom dates to some 74,000 years ago. Those two figures side by side — the thickness of the deposits and the age of their base — are also all that the Vietnamese survey of nearly a century of Hoabinhian research records about this cave.1
The context of that figure is a record made almost entirely of caves. Of the 145 Hoabinhian sites known in Vietnam nearly all lie in caves or under limestone rock shelters, with only two in the open air; Hoa Binh province and Thanh Hoa alone account for 106 of them, arranged in clusters along the valleys. Long occupation leaves its trace in layers: in some caves the shells of mountain and stream snails, eaten and dropped where people lived, alone built up three to five metres of deposit.1
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