Petralona A Middle Cave Pleistocene in Greece BY ARIS N. POULIANOS The discovery of the skull of the Palaeoanthropos of Petralona on the sixteenth of September in I960 gave a new impetus to research on the Palaeolithic Age in Greece. The author headed a group of the Spelaeological Society of Greece which conducted in the spring of 1968 excavations in the Cave of Petralona, the first such to be undertaken in a cave in Greece . A trial section was excavated far from the place where the skull was found , in chamber ii of the cave. The trench was over a meter wide and five meters deep. The data from this excavation trace the history of man in Greece back to over five hundred thousand years ago. The stratigraphy, based on the structure of the sediments, their coloration, the contents of each layer in relation to the other data, allowed us to distinguish basically two different layers which seem to form five basic levels (lettered A to E ) and which are of different geological chronology. In this article the author presents the evidence for the fluctuations in climate during the Middle and Upper Pleistocene with particular reference to chronolgy and implements. 6 Map of Greeceshowingthe locationof the caveof Petralona.