The Grotte du Lazaret ( English: ''Cave of Le Lazaret'') is an archaeological

cave Caves or caverns are natural voids under the Earth's Planetary surface, surface. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. Exogene caves are smaller openings that extend a relatively short distance undergrou ...

site of

prehistoric Prehistory, also called pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use o ...

human occupation study, situated in the eastern suburbs of the French town of

Nice Nice ( ; ) is a city in and the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative city limits, with a population of nearly one million Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Eur ...

. Results of excavations have been interpreted as to account for the construction of shelters by humans during the

Lower Paleolithic The Lower Paleolithic (or Lower Palaeolithic) is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 3.3 million years ago when the first evidence for stone tool production and use by hominins appears ...

period. Research teams have unearthed more than 20,000 fossilized faunal bone fragments. Two hundred thousand year old

cranial Standard anatomical terms of location are used to describe unambiguously the anatomy of humans and other animals. The terms, typically derived from Latin or Greek language, Greek roots, describe something in its standard anatomical position. Thi ...

fragments of a nine year old juvenile found in the cave suggest the presence of either ''

Homo heidelbergensis ''Homo heidelbergensis'' is a species of archaic human from the Middle Pleistocene of Europe and Africa, as well as potentially Asia depending on the taxonomic convention used. The species-level classification of ''Homo'' during the Middle Pleis ...

'' or a proto-

Neanderthal Neanderthals ( ; ''Homo neanderthalensis'' or sometimes ''H. sapiens neanderthalensis'') are an extinction, extinct group of archaic humans who inhabited Europe and Western and Central Asia during the Middle Pleistocene, Middle to Late Plei ...

human.

The possible shelter

Occupation layers of the cave in use during

marine isotopic stage Marine isotope stages (MIS), marine oxygen-isotope stages, or oxygen isotope stages (OIS), are alternating warm and cool periods in the Earth's paleoclimate, deduced from Oxygen isotope ratio cycle, oxygen isotope data derived from deep sea core ...

6 (186,000 to 127,000 years ago) were excavated during the 1970s and may demonstrate construction abilities and other organisational skills by the inhabitants at the time. Close to the mouth of the cave and along one wall were found

Acheulean Acheulean (; also Acheulian and Mode II), from the French after the type site of Saint-Acheul, is an archaeological industry of stone tool manufacture characterized by the distinctive oval and pear-shaped "hand axes" associated with ''Homo ...

stone tools along with fragments of animal bone surrounding two circular

charcoal Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents. In the traditional version of this pyrolysis process, ca ...

concentrations which likely served as

hearth A hearth () is the place in a home where a fire is or was traditionally kept for home heating and for cooking, usually constituted by a horizontal hearthstone and often enclosed to varying degrees by any combination of reredos (a low, partial ...

s. This occupation area measures and was delimited by the cave wall on three sides and on the fourth by a sinuous line of large stones. It is these which have been interpreted as having served as packing stones that could have been used to support the poles of an animal skin tent pitched against the cave wall. No evidence of the organic tent poles or tent itself would have survived but stone tool flakes and animal bone appear to spill outwards from between the stones at two points which may represent entrances to the conjectured shelter. Finds of tiny sea shells surrounding the hearths may represent

seaweed Seaweed, or macroalgae, refers to thousands of species of macroscopic, multicellular, marine algae. The term includes some types of ''Rhodophyta'' (red), '' Phaeophyta'' (brown) and ''Chlorophyta'' (green) macroalgae. Seaweed species such as ...

brought into the cave to serve as bedding. This may indicate specialised activity areas within the settlement with an inner domestic area and an outer one which would have been covered by the tent but presumably used for another purpose. It is by no means certain that the stones were brought into the cave and placed by people however and natural processes or a reason for their placement not involving a structure may explain their presence. The limited evidence from nearby sites where similar stone tools and other cultural material have been found close to concentrations of natural rocks is less compelling than at Le Lazaret. Examples of these similar sites include La Baume Bonne (in Quinson,

Alpes-de-Haute-Provence Alpes-de-Haute-Provence (sometimes abbreviated as AHP; ; ; ), formerly until 1970 known as Basses-Alpes (, ), is a department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of France, bordering Alpes-Maritimes and Italy to the east, Var to the sou ...

) and Orgnac. The evidence for housing in the archaeological record prior to the arrival of modern humans 50,000 years ago is slim, although any flimsy structure built prior to this time is unlikely to leave unmistakable archaeological traces after so long.

Bibliography

* Scarre, C (ed.) (2005). ''The Human Past'', London: Thames and Hudson. .

Footnotes

# De Lumley, 1975, ''Cultural evolution in France in its palaeoecological setting during the middle Pleistocene'', in After the Australopithecines, Butzer, KW and Isaac, G Ll. (eds) 745—808. The Hague:Mouton, qtd in Scarre, 2005

External links

Laboratoire de Préhistoire du Lazaret
- the French academic and government body that studies early prehistory in the region and which is based close to the cave (in French only). {{Authority control Prehistoric sites in France Lazaret Nice Landforms of Alpes-Maritimes Landforms of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur