Pre-Nuragic Sardinia

The Pre-Nuragic period refers to the prehistory of Sardinia from the Paleolithic till the middle Bronze age, when the Nuragic civilization flourished on the island.

The discovery of Paleolithic lithic workshops indicate a human presence in Sardinia in the period between 450,000 and 10,000 years ago.

According to the researchers, an hominid nicknamed "Nur" was the first to colonize the current territory of the island about 250,000 years ago, in the Lower Paleolithic; based on studies of a phalanx found in Cheremule, the researchers supposed that he may have been a pre-Neanderthal, but some have expressed doubts, assuming a morphological distance from hominids.

During the last ice age sea levels were lower than 130 meters, at that time Sardinia and Corsica formed a single large island, separated from Tuscany only by a narrow arm of sea.

The oldest remains of Homo sapiens in Sardinia date back to the Upper Paleolithic; their tracks have been found in the central part of Sardinia in the "Corbeddu cave" of Oliena.

Mesolithic human remains have been found at the "Su Coloru cave" of Laerru, in northern Sardinia (Anglona). The material culture suggest that these people came in Sardinia from the Italian peninsula after a difficult navigation with rudimentary boats.

The oldest complete human skeleton (renamed "Amsicora") was found in 2011 in the territory of Arbus, it dates back to about 9,000 years ago, the period of transition between the Mesolithic and the Neolithic.

The culture of Su Carroppu represents the earliest phase of the Neolithic in Sardinia (6th millennium BC). Since 1968, the excavations carried out by archaeologists Enrico Atzeni and Gérard Bailloud in a rock shelter on the limestone hills in the territory of Sirri called "Su Carroppu", found various coarse ceramics of a black-grey color decorated with the imprint of Cerastoderma edule along with tools made of obsidian from the Monte Arci.

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Wikipedia