Dehband Guian (Grotte)

Various descriptions

Herbert Daniel Gebauer - 06/01/2018

A large solitary chamber (60 m wide and 70 m long, up to 4 or 5 m high) is reported (note 1) from a situation a little bit less than halfway up an escarpment without recognised name (note 2) which lies on the left-hand side but at an unspecified distance along the road from Maymana and Belchirag, and somewhere north of what Lindberg called -Darreh Khochouk- or -Darreh Tout-, an east-west running valley north of a so-called main Darreh- Zang Valley (note 3). CAVE DESCRIPTION: Entering by a 30 m wide and 2 m high cave entrance, one scrambles down to one vast and semicircular chamber. On the left-hand side, and close to the entrance, results ceiling collapse a -limited- (enclosed?) space, about 2 to 3 m wide and 6 to 7 m long. This is the only true dark part of the cave. CAVE CONTENTS: Fed by three or four inlets, drops water from the ceiling on the left-hand side (as one enters?) and forms small pools a couple of centimetres deep. There are many short stalactites, -small-knobbed speleotems- (concrétions en petites granules), -breast-shaped ones- (en mamelons) and botryoidal calcite deposits (cauliflower stal) in the moist parts at the bottom of the chamber. In the lower parts the cave floor is covered with fine dust in which, near the cave entrance, embraces stones. There is some bat guano, bird shit and sheep dung. CULTURAL HISTORY - human use: In the lower parts of the chamber saw LINDBERG (1961a: 14) a bone which was apparently worked by hand. Put up perpendicularly in the cave entrance stood a large, long boulder, left as it was found. On asking an unrecognised Afghan informant for the significance of this standing stone, he said not to know but to assume that it marks a grave. CAVE CLIMATE: The bottom part of the cave is moist. On 27th May 1959 a temperature of 7°C was measured in the air and in the water in the lower part of the chamber when the temperature in the air at the entrance was 14°C. Humidity 90%. CAVE LIFE: JUBERTHIE & DECU (2001: 1746) list Arachnia: Aranea: Leptyphantes nebulosus SUND; Arachnida: Acari terestria: Haemogamasidae: Eulaelaps stabularis C.L. KOCH, collected from bat guano (Chiroptera!).a: Aranea: Leptyphantes nebulosus SUND; Arachnida: Acari terestria: Haemogamasidae: Eulaelaps stabularis C.L. KOCH, collected from bat guano (Chiroptera!).