Lower Paleolithic
In France, the site of the Olduvai culture belonging to hominid transitional species were discovered, which most likely there lived Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis. A human tooth 560 thousand years old was found in the Con d’Arago cave near the city of Perpignan. The milk tooth of a child of 5-6 years old, found in Arago in 2018, is dated at around the same age period.
Tautavel man from Arago (Caune de l’Arago) in the commune of Totavel dates back to 450 thousand years.
In addition to the caves, the inhabitants of the Upper Paleolithic, engaged in hunting and gathering, could build dwellings similar to those found in the context of Acheulean in the Grotte-du-Lazaret and Terra-Amata near Nice in France.
Middle Paleolithic
It is assumed that Neanderthals began to form in Europe on the basis of part of the local populations of the Heidelberg man about 300 thousand years ago. Two Neanderthal children who lived in the Rhone Basin who are 250 thousand years old, were found with traces of lead poisoning. Distinct neanderthaloids in the structure of the skull in European hominin populations appear about 230 thousand years ago, and finally Neanderthals formed by the end of the Riss-Würm interglacial 110-80 thousand years ago. They die out around 40-30 thousand years ago, presumably due to the inability to compete with the Cro-Magnons in a cold climate. This period in France includes numerous finds related to the Moustier culture, named after the rocky home of Le Moustier in the Dordogne region. The age of the remains of Neanderthal bones on the territory of Paris, scientists estimated at 200 thousand years. A number of tools were made using the technology of Levallois, a special kind of stone processing that originated in the era of the Lower Paleolithic, but most characteristic of the Neanderthal tools of the Middle Paleolithic. Evidence of cannibalism among Neanderthals was found in the Neanderthal settlements of Moula-Guercy and Les Pradelles. The layers of the Chavertoneron culture with the remains of Neanderthals in Arcy-sur-Cure dates back to 42 thousand years ago. In the chaperlon period, Cro-Magnon coexisted with the remnants of Neanderthals.
In Saint Esteve-Janson there is evidence of fireplaces and reddened land in the cave of Escale. These fireplaces are about 200 thousand years old. In the cave of Abri do Maras in the south of France, traces of foci were found by age of approx. 90 thousand years. Neanderthals formed a rather complex culture of life support, using various resources of the territory. In particular, in addition to hunting for the megafauna on which these short, but exceptionally strong people were specialized, they also knew how to catch small prey – wolves, arctic foxes, hares and birds, invented the first ropes on Earth, used medicinal plants and collected mushrooms.
Upper Paleolithic
The earliest people of the modern type — Cro-Magnon — entered Europe, including France, about 40,000 years ago during a long warming period with a relatively mild climate and a large number of edible plants. Together with them, the Cro-Magnons brought to Europe the art of sculpture, painting, body decoration, music and decoration of everyday objects. In southern France, some of the oldest examples of art have been discovered, in particular, wall paintings in Lascaux. In the Upper Paleolithic, the Franco-Cantabrian region was the richest in cultural monuments, the most densely populated in the world.
European Paleolithic cultures are divided into several chronological subgroups:
Orignac culture (about 34,000 – 23,000 years ago) – the beginning of the creation of the Paleolithic Venus, rock paintings on the walls of the Chauvet Cave (later drawings refer to the Gravettic culture). The first evidence of the coexistence of man and dog – traces of a paw of a wolf or a dog and the feet of a child ( en: Origin of the domestic dog) were found in the Chauvet cave.
Perigordian culture (about 35,000 – 20,000 years ago) – the validity of this term is disputed (at least the fact that subsequent periods represent a continuous tradition).
Gravetta culture (about 28,000 – 22,000 years ago) – it includes most of the Paleolithic Venus, drawings in the Koska cave (c. 27000 B.C.).
Solutrean culture (about 21,000 – 17,000 years ago)
Madeleine culture (about 18,000 – 10,000 years ago) – this culture probably includes cave paintings in Pech Merle ( Lot’s department in Languedoc , dating back about 16000 B.C.), Lasco (near the village of Montignac in the Dordogne region, dating from about 15,000 – 13,000 years BC. e.) and Trois-Frere.
Mesolithic
Mesolithic in France began with the end of the last glaciation and was associated with the transition of many cultures from hunting and gathering to primitive agriculture.
Madeleine culture arose in the late Paleolithic period and continued to exist in the Mesolithic. In the south-west of France, Azilian culture coexisted with similar Mesolithic cultures, like Tengher culture in northern Europe and Swider culture in northeastern Europe.
In the Late Mesolithic on the territory of Provence, Castelnian culture arises, soon absorbed by alien carriers of the cardiac culture, but having a great influence on subsequent hybrid cultures.
Among archaeologists, there are discussions about whether the Basques are descendants of the Mesolithic population of France. The genetic profile of the Basques in the male line (haplogroup of the Y-chromosome) does not have significant differences from neighboring peoples, but has some individual characteristics in the female (mitochondrial haplogroup). In the area of ​​residence of the Basques in the early Neolithic, there was a Roucadourien culture, which experienced a certain influence of the Neolithic culture of cardial ceramics, but retained for a long time the Mesolithic remnants; the Rukdur people even witnessed signs of cannibalism. However, the Basque language can be a legacy not of the Rukdur culture, but of the influence of one of the more developed neighboring non-Indo-European cultures – for example, the same culture of cardiac ceramics.