Kudaro

five karst caves (I, II, III, IV, and V) on the right bank of the middle Dzhodzhori River on Mount Chasavalikhokh in the luzhnaia Osetiia Autonomous Oblast. The caves were discovered in 1955 and were investigated from 1956 to 1961 by the Soviet archaeologist V. P. Liubin. In the lower cultural layers of caves I and III, the remains of a settlement of Lower Paleolithic hunters of the Acheulean period were found. Also unearthed were stone hand axes and other implements and fragments of the bones of Quaternary animals, birds, and fish. Above the Acheulean levels lay the levels of later epochs: Mousterian epoch, Mesolithic period, Bronze Age, and Middle Ages.