A walk in Milia Grevena and our surrounding area goes back millions of years in earth's history.
In the 1960s the village was at risk of landslides and was abandoned. A church, a fountain, a stone belfry, collapsed walls of two- and three-story houses remained to remind of the old village. Milia was rebuilt a little further north on firmer ground, but in the area the ground hid rare treasures.
Over the centuries, the inhabitants of the wider area discovered bones of prehistoric animals. But a chance discovery of fossils in 1986 was the beginning of systematic excavations by Aristotle University Thessaloniki throughout the region up to the banks of Aliakmons, which in 1990 brought to light a part of the skeleton of the giant elephant Elephas antiquus, aged 200.000 years, in the location of Abelia Grevena. This giant was a warm-climate elephant, standing 4 meters tall at the shoulder and weighing 6 tons, with characteristic straight tusks, unlike the hairy mammoths of the Ice Age with curved tusks that we know.
Excavations continued, and in 1996 huge bones and a pair of 3,5-meter-long tusks were uncovered, which scientists believe belonged to a male giant mastodon (mastodons were proboscis animals, ancestors of mammoths and today's elephants).
This discovery gave life to the efforts of paleontologists, who continued their work for years, and brought to light the bones of other prehistoric animals, an incomplete skeleton of a mammoth with tusks 4,39 meters long and the largest find in 2007: a pair of tusks long 5,02 meters of the same species of mastodon (Mammut borsoni) that lived in the area 3cm ago. years. These tusks are one of the most impressive findings of Paleontology to date. After 10 years of research, they were listed in the Guinness Book of Records in 2011 as the largest tusks in the world.
In an interglacial period 2,5 to 3 million years ago, during which northern Europe was bitterly cold, the large savannas with dense forests of the region combined with abundant water and a climate that was warmer than today, they provided shelter to many prehistoric animals. In this rich environment large carnivores, terrible saber-toothed bears, Ursus bears, wild beasts (a form of giant bear with very sharp teeth), and lynxes hunted herbivores such as giant two-horned rhinoceroses, identified for the first time in Greece, tapirs, bucks, prehistoric cattle (bison and gazelles), deer and wild boar. A species of prehistoric turtle was also found in the area.
The four largest tusks in the world, as well as the bones of mastodons and other prehistoric animals are on display at Natural History Museum in Milia Grevena, a modern four-room museum that replaced the old small village museum and houses a vast world heritage. It is open to the public on weekdays from 09.00 to 14.30 and on Saturdays until 17.00 and the entrance is free.
A visit to Milia will give us the opportunity to connect with the distant past of our homeland. The village is only 16 km from Grevena and has access from the old national road. In our excursion we can include a walk to Grevena, Siatista, or choose the country roads that will lead us to Aliakmonas, Velvedo and Neraida, with their wonderful landscapes.
