Le Régourdou
Le Regourdou is a cave with artifacts of the Middle Paleolithic in Montignac in the French department of Dordogne . The cave became famous through the discovery of a Neanderthal man buried in a tomb .
location
Le Régourdou is only around 500 meters from the famous Lascaux cave . The entrance to the cave is not far from the small hamlet Le Régourdou , located on the heights above the Vézère , about 2 kilometers southeast of the small town of Montignac.
The actual site lies under a huge abri , the roof of which had collapsed and buried the archaeologically relevant layers under itself.
There is now a small museum next to the site.
On the opposite slope another cave can be visited - La Balutie , inhabited from the Aurignacien to the Magdalenian .
history
The Régourdou cave was discovered in September 1957 by Roger Constant, who was looking for the natural entrance to the Lascaux cave near his homestead. The cave was then entrusted to two archaeologists - Eugène Bonifay and B. Vandermeersch - for further investigation. The two carried out excavations between 1961 and 1965, in the course of which they were able to recover artefacts from the Quina-type Moustérien , characterized by scrapers with scaly retouching.
Finds
In the course of the excavations, Bonifay and Vandermeersch came across the grave of a Neanderthal man . The skeleton (scientifically named Regourdou 1 or R1) lay in a shallow trench that had been carefully covered with stone slabs and bordered on one side by a small natural stone wall. The skeleton was turned on its left side, its knees pulled under its chin, and its hands brought to its head. The head was facing north. The hull had been buried under a rather large slab, smaller slabs and sand covered the rest of the tomb. Later a fire was kindled on the burial mound.
Many bones have been preserved from the skeleton, including the breastbone. From the skull unfortunately only the right one is the mandible exists, but which impresses with its robustness. The lower jaw has all the teeth that are only slightly worn.
Next to the Neanderthal grave there are several trenches, some of which are also provided with remains of walls and stone slabs. Inside were the bones and skulls of brown bears . A fairly large ditch, five feet long, also walled and covered with a mighty stone slab, contained remains of bones and skulls of the same species.
This somewhat puzzling find may indicate a ritual bear cult among the Neanderthals. Finds aiming in the same direction have also been made in caves in Switzerland and Italy . The establishment of a ritual connection between bear and human is not endorsed by all researchers. It is possible that these are purely taphonomic phenomena in connection with bears hibernating in the cave.
Age
Based on the artifacts from the Moustérien , the cave of Le Régourdou can be assigned an approximate age of 70,000 years BP ( Würm II ).
literature
- B. & G. Delluc, A. Roussot, J. Roussot-Larroque: Connaître la préhistoire en Périgord . Éditions SUD-OUEST, 1990, ISBN 2-87901-048-9 .
- Asier Gómez-Olivencia et al .: The costal skeleton of the Regourdou 1 Neandertal. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 130, 2019, pp. 151–171, doi: 10.1016 / j.jhevol.2017.12.005
Individual evidence
- ^ E. Bonifay: Un ensemble rituel moustérien à la grotte du Régourdou (Montignac, Dordogne) . In: Actes du IVème Congrès de l'UISPP . vol. II. Rome 1965, p. 136-140 .
- ↑ Cavanhié, N .: Étude et archéozoologique taphonomique des grands carnivores du site paleolithique moyen de Regourdou (Montignac, Dordogne) . Université de Toulouse II le Mirail, Mémoire de Master 2 2007.
Coordinates: 45 ° 3 ′ 19 ″ N , 1 ° 10 ′ 45 ″ E