Thor’s Cave

The abode of the god of thunder, or maybe just a corruption of the word “tor” meaning hill. Evidence has been found that man’s earliest ancestors were here well before the last ice age, over 50,000 years ago. Bones, human as well as animal bones, long extinct bear, giant deer, wooly rhinoceros and lion have all been excavated by Victorian antiquarians and again in the 1930s. Also, amazingly, dolphin bones, thought to be associated with religious cults. What journey they must have taken to be deposited in this cave 250 feet above the River Manifold in the Staffordshire Moorlands, a cave formed a couple of million years ago by an underground river system. The freeze thaw of successive ice ages carved the deep valley leaving the cave exposed overlooking the valley and an ideal shelter for early man.