Tens of thousands of years ago nothing resembled Epirus. The mountains were covered by many meters of ice. The Adriatic was not a sea, but a vast plain. Corfu was not an island but part of the mainland. In the gorges and the labyrinthial valleys, alongside rivers and swamps, lived wolves, deer with big horns, and some other two-legged creatures with robust bodies and protruding eyebrows. These were the Neanderthals, who lived by hunting and collecting fruits from nature and who left their traces in several corners of Epirus (Asprochaliko, Kokkinopylo, Karvounari). Archaeologists have not found their skeletons but have found their stone weapons and tools instead, such as scrapers to soften peltry, shellfish beads and much more evidence of their resourcefulness.