Cave of great archaeological and palaeoethnological interest, named after the famous French prehistorian Henri Breuil, one of the pioneers of the study of rock art and European prehistory. The site is one of the key places for studying prehistoric human presence on the Circeo promontory, in scientific continuity with the research begun after the discovery of the nearby Guattari Cave in 1939.
Alberto Carlo Blanc divided the prehistoric caves of the Circeo schematically into two groups: those that yielded fossil animal remains and stone tools, and those that showed only a fossil-bearing debris fill. The first group includes the Guattari, Fossellone, Breuil, Acquario, Elena, Presepio, Cervide and Stefanini caves and the Torre Fico cave. In particular, the Acquario, Breuil and Presepio caves preserved substantial remains of their Quaternary fill, including fossil fauna, charcoal remains – evidence of the use of fire by humans – and stone tools of the Pontinian culture (that is, of Neanderthal man). The Breuil Cave, reachable only by sea, opens in a small cove about 1 km west of the steep side of Mount Circeo known as the Precipizio. It was discovered in 1936 by Alberto Carlo Blanc during one of his constant, systematic explorations of the cliff caves. Blanc dedicated it to the Abbé H. Breuil, the famous French palaeoethnologist, his colleague and collaborator. The site can be considered one of the most interesting on the promontory, as it has given us important information about the first humans to live in our area: Homo neanderthalensis. Despite its importance, the cave was excavated only from 1986, by the Italian Institute of Palaeoethnology. The first studies of the finds show that the Breuil Cave was inhabited by Neanderthal man, confirmed not only by thousands of small flint tools typical of the Pontinian industry, but also by the human fossils found, including a fragment of parietal bone and two molars of clearly Neanderthal shape. The accumulation of animal remains in the cave is almost entirely due to humans: they hunted mainly ibex and red deer. The animal remains show traces of the various stages of processing the carcass (from skinning to eating), and adults were chosen for hunting and carried into the site after the hunt. Analysis of the teeth of the hunted animals suggests seasonal occupation of the cave from autumn to early spring. The bird remains (as many as 39 different species have been identified) indicate a cool temperate climate (colder than today), roughly similar to that of continental Europe today, with quite varied habitats, as shown by the coexistence of woodland species, others of rocky areas and others of open spaces. Very interesting are the new results from the analysis of microscopic use-wear on the stone tools, which reveal what the tools made by humans were used for. In the archaeological sample from layer 6 of the Breuil Cave, wear traces have been observed relating to butchering, hide scraping and woodworking. Recently, thanks to the most innovative techniques for analysing artefacts, a date of around 33,000 years ago has been proposed for some samples from the upper part of the sequence. This would be quite recent for a Neanderthal settlement, a very late phase in the existence of the species. It means that about 35,000-33,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens had already been present in northern Italy for some millennia, Neanderthals were still living at the Circeo, perhaps the last before their complete extinction.