Histoire régionale du bassin aquitain sud-ouest guyenne gascogne périgord

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Home-40.000/-2.500 > CroMagnon Last revision : April 2006

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- 40 000 : Homo Sapiens Sapiens, that means "present" man (us !), who appeared in Africa 120 000 years ago, settles and take the place of the Neandertal man in Western Europe

- 33 000 : Disappearance of the last Neandertal men who were living for example at La Férrassie (at Savignac inDordogne). They were processing tools as Sapiens Sapiens, like blades or bone tools.

 

1) Hunters and Pickers :

Combe Capelle man (close to Montferrand in Dordogne) is a Sapiens Sapiens man with some neandertal features.

- 30 000 : Cro-Magnon man (at the Eyzies of Tayac in Dordogne) with very few neandertal features.

a) Subdivisions of the superior Paléo-lithique (means "old-stone", and superior because now processed by sapiens sapiens men !) :

Date Name Origin Représentative

Tools

Art in cave

-33 000 inferior Perigord from Dordogne Combe Capelle man

First bone tools

Front or animal heads : La Ferrasie

-30 000 Aurignac from Aurignac, in Haute Garonne Cro-Magnon man

bone spike of lance

Back cervical line : Isturitz (64), Gargas (65), Pair-non-Pair (33)

-20 000 superior Périgord from la Ferrasie in Dordogne  

bone needle with eye

mane, ears : Lascaux (24)

-15 000 Magdalenian from La Madeleine (at Tursac in Dordogne) Chancelade man

important bone industry, with harpoon and lances

Feet ont the ground : Font de Gaume and Combarelles (24), Niaux (31), Altamira in north Spain.

Chauvet cave in Ardèche. Pech-Merle cave.

ART : Head of Brassempouy woman (Landes, -27 000?), Reared horse at Bruniquel (Tarn et Garonne), Lespugue Venus (Haute Garonne), sculpted La Madeleine buffalo (Dordogne), Lourdes horse at Espelugnes (Hautes Pyrénées)

 

b) - 10 000 : Meso-lithique ("middle stone"), with arrows and so with the bow. Climate warming, forests replace steppes, disappearance of huge animals like the mammoth or the big reindeer, and so disappearance of important food reserves. Human population is estimated on France territory : 50 000 men

- 9 000 : Azilian (from the Mas d'Azil, in Ariège)

- 7 500 : Sauveterrian (from Sauveterre le Lémance, in Lot et Garonne)

 

 

2) Breeders and farmers :

- 6000 : Néo-lithic revolution ("the new-stone") = the POLISHED stone:

 Under the influence of asianic people (coming from Anatolia), men start to breed animals and to dig over the soil (wheat is coming after, from Mesopotamia ; elder (-4000) french cereals found in Thémines, near Rocamadour in the Lot). This helps to create pottery (to cook and keep the food), the weaving, the first sedentary villages (wooden houses have left very few vestiges), a demographic boom ; it's the "neolithic revolution", wich "polished stone" term give a slight (and wrong) idea. Thanks to the different potteries, but also with the help of the gravestones, some important asianic families have been reconstituted :

Asianic people :   Pottery Graves
THENACIANS Roucadour

Artenac

Pottery with flat bottom hillocks

small graves (chest)

CARDICAL FRANCO IBERICS

and CHASSEANS

Roquefort Smoothy potteries,

decorated with triangles

pits

cistum

MEGALITHICS   Pottery with round bottom, and then flat one

decorated with commas

dolmen with covered path
ALMERIANS Montbalo Pottery with conical bottom, and with large handles dolmen
LIGURES (house on post) Bascs ? Gobelets campaniform tumblers (bell shape) stone chests


* - 3 200 : pottery at Saint Michel du Touch (Haute Garonne) ; potteries at Camprafaud and at Jean Cros.

* dolmens in the South West of France :