Bronze Age France

Prehistoric France is the period in the human occupation (including early hominins) of the geographical area covered by present-day France which extended through prehistory and ended in the Iron Age with the Roman conquest, when the territory enters the domain of written history.

The Pleistocene is characterized by long glacial periods accompanied by marine regressions, interspersed at more or less regular intervals by milder but shorter interglacial stages. Human populations during this period consisted of nomadic hunter-gatherers. Several human species succeeded each other in the current territory of France until the arrival of modern humans in the Upper Palaeolithic .

The earliest known fossil man is Tautavel Man, dating from 570,000 years ago. Neanderthal Man is attested in France from about 335,000 years before present. Homo sapiens, modern humans, are attested since around 54,000 years ago in the Mandrin Cave.

In the Neolithic, which begins in the south of France in the middle of the 6th millennium BC, the first farmers appeared. The first megaliths were erected in the early 5th millennium BC.

The Palaeolithic

Lower Palaeolithic

The Lower Paleolithic period began with the first human occupation of the region. Stone tools discovered at Lézignan-la-Cèbe indicate that early humans were present in France from least 1.57 million years ago.

5 prehistoric sites in France are dated from between 1 and 1.2 million years ago:
* the Bois-de-Riquet, in Lézignan-la-Cèbe, in the Hérault (1.2 Ma), discovered in 2008
* the Vallonnet cave, in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, in the Alpes-Maritimes (1.15 Ma), discovered in 1958
* Terre-des-Sablons, in Lunery-Rosières, in Cher (1.15 Ma),
* Pont-de-Lavaud, at Éguzon-Chantôme, in Indre (1.05 Ma),
* Pont-de-la-Hulauderie, in Saint-Hilaire-la-Gravelle, in Loir-et-Cher (1 My).

None of these sites have thus far revealed any evidence of lithic industry which prevents identification of the human species responsible for them.

France includes Olduwan (Abbevillian) and Acheulean sites from early or non-modern (transitional) ''Hominini'' species, most notably ''Homo erectus'' and ''Homo heidelbergensis''. Tooth ''Arago 149'' - 560,000 years. Tautavel Man (''Homo erectus tautavelensis''), is a proposed subspecies of the hominid ''Homo erectus'', the 450,000-year-old fossil remains of whom were discovered in the Arago cave in Tautavel.

The Grotte du Vallonnet near Menton contained simple stone tools dating to 1 million to 1.05 million years BC. Cave sites were exploited for habitation, but the hunter-gatherers of the Palaeolithic era also possibly built shelters such as those identified in connection with Acheulean tools at Grotte du Lazaret and Terra Amata near Nice, from 400,000 BC.

Middle Palaeolithic

The Neanderthals are thought to have arrived earlier than 300,000 BC, but seem to have died out by about by 30,000 BC, presumably unable to compete with modern humans during a period of cold weather. Numerous Neanderthal, or "Mousterian", artifacts (named after the type site of Le Moustier, a rock shelter in the Dordogne region of France) have been found from this period, some using the "Levallois technique", a distinctive type of flint knapping developed by hominids during the Lower Palaeolithic but most commonly associated with the Neanderthal industries of the Middle Palaeolithic. Importantly, recent findings suggest that Neanderthals and modern humans may have interbred.

Important Mousterian sites are found at:

* Fieux, in Lot-et-Garonne