Over a century since archaeologists confirmed that a partial skeleton discovered in a Devon quarry could be among the oldest remains of a modern human found in Britain, the location of the caves remain a highly guarded secret. Part of a large area at Cattedown bought by the Chevron oil company in 2000, the caves remain a secret to avoid them being ransacked by fossil-hunters or vandals.
Listed as a scheduled monument by English Heritage (now Historic England) in 1999, the exact position of the caves, and the many wonders they undoubtedly still hold, remain a highly guarded secret. Since its discovery, only a very few approved explorers have ever been allowed to enter the site near Shapters Way.
Plenty of fossils were unearthed at the Admiralty Breakwater Quarries at Oreston during the early 19th century, but uncovering these human bones was an extraordinary breakthrough. Cattedown Man, estimated to date to 14,000BC or even earlier, was unearthed with 14 other sets of homo sapiens bones belonging to both adults and children. The skeleton was found along with fossils of Ice Age rhinoceroses, reindeer, hyenas, lions, bats, small field mammals and a woolly mammoth.
