A prehistoric site from the Middle Paleolithic, filled with tools cut according to a technology typical of Neanderthals, has been unearthed near the banks of the Seine in Clichy-la-Garenne in the Paris region, announced Thursday, October 15. 'National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap).
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This is the first Neanderthal site discovered on the outskirts of Paris since excavations in the 19th century revealed, in the large quarries of Clichy-Levallois, the existence of this stone-cutting technique, known as the “
Levallois method
”.
The new group dates back to the Middle Paleolithic, a prehistoric period between -350,000 years and -45,000 years before our era.
It was then located along the river, whose banks have shifted slightly since.
While excavating the oldest levels, archaeologists have found elements of a fauna associated with sharp shards of cut flint.
Placed flat, "
as if they had not moved since,
" told AFP Sophie Clément, scientific manager of the site.
These sharp shards are typical of the “
Levallois method
”, an elaborate debitage technique, which consisted in pre-determining the stone shards that the craftsman-tailor would take out of the raw material.
A method "
emblematic of the Middle Paleolithic, associated with Neanderthals
", specifies the archaeologist, a specialist in lithic technology.
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Was the site a fabrication shop?
“
It would be something more instantaneous: the men would have probably stopped there and cut stones for an immediate need - for example to consume the fauna found nearby
,” she suggests.
"
They mastered the technology so well that they could afford to cut a few pieces and start again leaving their tools on site ... they were not in a logic of + profitability + that we find more at Sapiens
", advance the archaeologist.
The first observations of this technique, in the 19th century, were also surprising because "
we were still at the beginnings of prehistoric times, with a biblical chronology, and some still had a very savage vision of man 'before the flood'
" , she says.
The archaeologists had discovered the first site during the development of Haussmannian Paris, between 1860 and 1870. A nod to history, it is also in the context of redevelopment of Greater Paris that these new "
tools Levallois
”were found.
"
The circle is complete
", welcomes the prehistorian.
The icing on the cake, his team found, in higher layers, a fragment of mammoth tusk, unfortunately very damaged.