Porc-Épic Cave

A limestone cave in the cliffs above Dire Dawa, about 4 kilometres south of the centre, named "Porcupine" by the French archaeologist Henri de Monfreid who first investigated it in the 1920s. It is one of the most important Middle Stone Age sites in the Horn of Africa, with stratified deposits documenting human occupation across tens of thousands of years.

The interior is dry, cool, and undeveloped — there are no signs, no tickets, and almost no visitors. Take a guide from town who can locate the entrance and explain the layout. Wear good shoes for the climb up the scree slope. The view from the cave mouth back over the city basin is worth the trip even without the archaeology.

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A story
The cave preserves one of the largest collections of Middle Stone Age ochre in the world — more than 4,000 pieces — and evidence of repeated human occupation from around 60,000 to 40,000 years ago. A bone fragment from a juvenile Homo sapiens found here in 1933 is one of the earliest modern human remains from East Africa outside the Rift Valley sites.

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