The Baysuntau mountain range in Uzbekistan hides a world-famous Teshik-Tash cave in its slopes. Teshik-Tosh is translated from Uzbek language as “a Rock with holes”. It is located in one of the most impressive gorges of Shiroboddarya, not far from the village of Verkhniy Machai at an altitude of about 1500 meters above sea level. Teshik-Tash grotto is situated in a narrow canyon which is hard to find without a guide. Teshik-Tash consists not of one, but several caves and the most popular among the visitors, is the grotto in which the famous burial site was discovered.

In 1938, archaeologist Michael E. Masson found the burial place in the cave and a Soviet archaeologist Aleksey Pavlovich Okladnikov discovered a burial from the Mousterian culture of a Neanderthal girl. Previously it was assumed that this skeleton belongs to a boy. A skull and some bones found belong to a Neanderthal child, which according to the latest research belong to a girl that was from 8 to 10 years old, surrounded by several skeletons of different animals. 

Among the animals there were birds as well as horns of a mountain goat, that were dug into the ground in the form of a circle which tells about the similarity of the ritual ceremony with other Neanderthal burial sites. In the Termez anthropological museum, you can find a sculptural work created according to the child’s appearance recreated by anthropologists.