The Grotte de Spy is located near Spy

Spy, Belgium

Spy is a village in the municipality of Jemeppe-sur-Sambre near Namur, Belgium.Here in 1886, in Betche aux Roches cavern, Maximin Lohest and Marcel de Puydt found two nearly perfect Neanderthal skeletons at the depth of 16 ft., with numerous implements of the Mousterian type. Recently Yves Saquet...

 in the municipality of Jemeppe-sur-Sambre

Jemeppe-sur-Sambre

Jemeppe-sur-Sambre is a Walloon municipality located in the Belgian province of Namur. On 1 January 2006 the municipality had 17,990 inhabitants...

, province of Namur

Namur (province)

Namur is a province of Wallonia, one of the three regions of Belgium. It borders on the Walloon provinces of Hainaut, Walloon Brabant, Liège and Luxembourg in Belgium, and on France. Its capital is the city of Namur...

, Belgium

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

. It has been classified as Wallonia's Major Heritage by the Walloon Region.

It is one of the most important paleolithic

Paleolithic

The Paleolithic Age, Era or Period, is a prehistoric period of human history distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools discovered , and covers roughly 99% of human technological prehistory...

 sites in Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, and has undergone many excavations with many recoveries. In 1886 a discovery was made that still represents a capital episode in the history of science. The excavation was conducted by inhabitants of Liège, and consisted of an archaeologist (Marcel de Puydt), a geologist

Geologist

A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using...

 (Max Lohest) and a paleontologist (Julien Fraipont). This team proved to the international community the existence of a more antiquated type of human, the Neanderthal

Neanderthal

The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia...

. Julien Fraipont published about Spy in an American review.