The man of Cro-Magnon is a prehistoric Homme . It is in fact an old denomination depreciated for the representatives of the species Homo sapiens or “modern Men” made in Europe at the Paléolithique superior between 35.000 and 10.000 years before the present.

The name of “ Cro-Magnon ” comes from the toponym “Abri of Cro-Magnon”, small a Abri-sous-roche located in the commune of the Eyzies-with-Tayac (the Dordogne, France) where Louis Lartet discovered five skeletons of this species in 1868. The name itself comes from the Occitan ( cròs = hollow, crosa = cave) and would mean either the Grand Hole , or the Trou of Magnou , deformed name of a hermit who would have lived there, or the shelter of Mr Magnon .

History

In 1868, the geologist Louis Lartet who carries out excavations on the site of Cro-Magnon, one of many the shelters - under - rock of cliff of the Eyzies-with-Tayac, discovers five skeletons associated with other fragmentary remainders. Among the five skeletons, one counts three men, a woman and a child, in what was probably a burial allotted then to the Aurignacien.

They are these skeletons and especially the n°1, sometimes called “the Old man” which were used as a basis for Armand de Quatrefages and Ernest-Theodore Hamy to define in 1878 the “race of Cro-Magnon” by distinguishing it from other “races” (“race from Truchère”; “race of Grenelle”; etc). Whereas the other denominations defined by Quatrefages and Hamy fell into the lapse of memory that from the man from Cro-Magnon was a great success and was used to indicate the whole of the modern fossils of men discovered little by little in Western Europe (the Dordogne, Grottes of Grimaldi, etc).

Following other derived terms were create like Proto-Cro-Magnon or Cro-Magnoïdes respectively indicating the Homo sapiens of the Middle East (Qafzeh and Skull) and those of Europe present at the Mesolithic .

Recently, a new dating of the fossils called into question attribution to Aurignacien of the remainders discovered to Cro-Magnon. It would be individuals about the more recent period of the Gravettien who would have been buried in the level aurignacian subjacent on the ground of dwelling.

Currently, the scientific community practically gave up the growing old expression of “man of Cro-Magnon” to the profit of those of “anatomically modern men” and Homo sapiens .

See too

Internal bonds

• Man of Néanderthal

Sources

• Armand de Quatrefages, Introduction to the study of the human races , Schleicher Brothers and Co edict., Paris, 1887. Consultable on line.
• Bernard Vandermeersh, “Cro-Magnon (man of)” in Dictionary of Prehistory , under Dir. of Andre Leroi-Gourhan, university Presses of France, Paris, 1988.

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