In 1868 our understanding of humanity changed. That year, a team of workers was widening the road between the French village of Eyzies-de-Tayac and the train station. In order to do this, they had to remove rock from the foot of a cliff in an area known as “Cro Magnon”. "Cro" signifies “hollow place” in the Périgord dialect, and "Magnon" was just the name for the area in which the hollow place was located, taken from the name of a hermit who had lived there. The workers discovered very old skeletons that would eventually revolutionize our knowledge about the origins of humankind. For “Cro Magnon” man, as these ancient humans came to be called, resembled modern humans very closely, in contrast with the Neanderthals that lived at the same time. They were tall (1.80 meters) and had high, flat foreheads and strong chins. In Europe, where they came to settle 40,000 years ago after having lived in Asia, they are our most direct ancestors.

Marcel Otte, professor of prehistoric archaeology at the University of Liège, is very interested in Cro Magnon. He has just published a book on the subject, and this interest is palpable on every page. We in fact owe our society to this distant ancestor. Cro Magnon humans were the first to settle permanently, thus no longer remaining subject to seasonal migrations, a crucial stage in human social organization. Cro Magnon man’s relationship with death governed his life; he was the first creator of beauty (as in the grottoes of Altamira and Lascaux). His Neanderthal cousin could not resist the cultural shock of his arrival.


OTTE M., Cro-Magnon, Editions Perrin, 2008.