Sochi - the Motherland of the "Pale-Faces".
After the primitive man had gradually occupied the torrid zone of the Earth, he confidently entered the subtropics, and about 400000 years ago he appeared in the environs of Sochi. Living conditions were fairly good here even in the ice-age. The only thing that bothered the local Neandertals was the changeable sea level which used to go down for about hundred meters or to rise to the point of 10 meters above the modern level. Of course this influenced the number of fossil camps.
According to the Cambridge "Guide to Prehistoric Man" the Akhshtyrskaya Cave is the northernmost point in the south-east of Europe which once was inhabited by the Cro-Magnon men, the representatives of "the European (Caucasian, white) race, the ancestors of modern Europeans". They were noted for the original technique of stone implements processing (the Khosta Mustierre culture). The Atsinskaya, the Navalishenskaya, the Vorontsovskaya and some other caves were also inhabited.
Sochi is a paradise place for speleologists. 400 caves have already been explored here, and two of them - a 535 meters deep precipice called "The Soaring Bird" and 630 meters deep "System of Friends" - are the deepest ones in Russia.
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