The oldest woman in Sicily
The skeleton of Thea, the oldest woman in Sicily, was found in Acquedolci.
Thea's bones were found in the grotta di San Teodoro in Acquedolci. The name Thea is a tribute to the place where it was found: Thea, from the Latin Theodora, is the name of the cave.
Thea's skeleton, complete except for a few ribs and a hand, dates back to around 11,000 years ago, from the Upper Paleolithic, and represents the oldest skeleton found in Sicily.
Thea is believed to have been a very important woman belonging to a high social class: her teeth are perfect and therefore she had no feeding problems; the joints are little worn so she must have been a priestess or princess. She is around 1.70 m tall, and is believed to have died around the age of 30 from a second birth.
Recent studies have reconstructed the appearance of her face. The reconstruction and the skeleton are kept at the Gaetano Giorgio Gemmellaro Museum of Paleontology and Geology in Palermo.
