According to Atlas Obscura, Grotte Scladina is a cave in Belgium's Meuse Valley that has yielded one of Europe's richest archaeological records. Since nineteen seventy-one, continuous excavations have uncovered one hundred twenty thousand animal bones and twenty thousand artifacts from the Middle Paleolithic—spanning hundreds of thousands of years. The cave's most spectacular discovery came in nineteen ninety-three: remains of a Neanderthal child, estimated at eight years old and one hundred twenty-seven thousand years old. Remarkably, researchers extracted DNA from one of the child's molars—the oldest human DNA ever successfully sequenced. What makes Scladina unique is its sediment column: fifteen meters deep, divided into twenty-eight distinct layers, offering the most complete Upper Pleistocene climate record in Belgium. Scientists worldwide request samples regularly to understand how Earth's climate evolved across tens of thousands of years. Today, the cave is part of UNESCO's World Heritage List and remains the only Belgian cave still under active excavation and open to visitors—a rare window into the Neanderthal world.

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