page_title: Haua Fteah
section_title: Stratigraphy and layout
hierarchical_section_title: Haua Fteah / Stratigraphy and layout
caption_attribution_description: English: The Haua Fteah cave: (a) looking southwest up to the cave from the coastal plain and (b) looking south across the doline floor into the cave; the standing figures indicate the scale of the cave mouth, which is ∼50 m wide and ∼20 m high (Photographs: G. Barker).
context_page_description: Haua Fteah is a large karstic cave located in the Cyrenaica in northeastern Libya. This site has been of significance to research on African archaeological history and anatomically modern human prehistory because it was occupied during the Middle and Upper Paleolithic, the Mesolithic and the Neolithic. Evidence of modern human presence in the cave date back to 200,000 BP.
  The term ‘haua’ describes a typical cave structure of the local coastal area, which has been formed in its present shape by erosion processes of the sea during the early stage of the Pleistocene.
context_section_description: Haua Fteah is 50 metres (160 ft) high by 20 metres (66 ft) wide on the north entrance with an 80 metres (260 ft) span on the interior roofed portion of the cave. The horizontal stratigraphic layers are defined by the types of sediment contained in each layer and is supported by using radiocarbon dating techniques.
  The geological time scale at Haua Fteah shows major climatic changes that occurred during the Pleistocene. During the final stage of the  Riss-Wurm interglacial period the shoreline was six meters above the present sea level. The second major stage is that in which the sea level was twenty meters below current sea level.
caption: Haua Fteah cave
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