Moulin Quignon

Moulin Quignon is an archaeological site in the northern French commune of Abbeville in the Somme department . It is one of the places where Jacques Boucher de Perthes discovered the first hand axes between 1837 and 1868 , which - together with finds from nearby Saint-Acheul - are considered to be the earliest evidence of the culture of the Acheuléen . These stone tools , which were recovered in connection with prehistoric fossils, convinced Charles Lyell , among others , that mankind was older than what Georges Cuvier assumed was around 6000 years and consequently they are at the beginning of prehistory as a science in the modern sense.

However, the site fell into disrepute and was soon forgotten after a lower jaw was found in 1863 , which quickly turned out to be an attempt at deception by quarry workers; In 2016, a study confirmed its current origin. It has only been receiving scientific attention again since 2016, more than 150 years after its discovery and after the site was largely overbuilt by residential houses. In 2017, for example, several dozen stone artifacts were recovered from the deposits of an earlier flowing water (the “palaeo- Somme ”), for which an age of 670,000 to 650,000 years was calculated. These finds are considered to be the oldest evidence of the presence of Homo heidelbergensis in northern France.

literature

Pierre Antoine, Marie-Hélène Moncel, Nicole Limondin-Lozouet, Jean-Luc Locht et al .: Palaeoenvironment and dating of the Early Acheulean localities from the Somme River basin (Northern France): New discoveries from the High Terrace at Abbeville-Carrière Carpentier . In: Quaternary Science Reviews. Volume 149, 2016, pp. 338-371, doi: 10.1016 / j.quascirev.2016.07.035 .

Individual evidence

↑ Jacques Boucher de Perthes : Antiquités celtiques et antédiluviennes. Mémoire sur l'industrie primitive et les arts à leur origine. Treuttel et Wurtz, Paris 1847, full text
^ Charles Lyell : Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man. Murray, London 1863.
^ ^A ^b Pierre Antoine, Marie-Hélène Moncel, Pierre Voinchet et al .: The earliest evidence of Acheulian occupation in Northwest Europe and the rediscovery of the Moulin Quignon site, Somme valley, France. In: Scientific Reports. Volume 9, Article No. 13091, 2019, doi: 10.1038 / s41598-019-49400-w .
^ Marie-Hélène Moncel, Rachel Orliac, Patrick Auguste, and Carole Vercoutère: La séquence de Moulin Quignon est-elle une séquence archéologique? In: L'Anthropologie. Volume 120, No. 4, 2016, pp. 369-388, doi: 10.1016 / j.anthro.2016.05.008
^ Arnaud Hurel, Jean-Jacques Bahain, Marie-Hélène Moncel et al .: Moulin Quignon: la redécouverte d'un site. In: L'Anthropologie. Volume 120, No. 4, 2016, pp. 428-438, doi: 10.1016 / j.anthro.2016.05.007 .

[1] Jacques Boucher de Perthes : Antiquités celtiques et antédiluviennes. Mémoire sur l'industrie primitive et les arts à leur origine. Treuttel et Wurtz, Paris 1847, full text

[2] Charles Lyell : Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man. Murray, London 1863.

[p.Antoine2019-3] A ^b Pierre Antoine, Marie-Hélène Moncel, Pierre Voinchet et al .: The earliest evidence of Acheulian occupation in Northwest Europe and the rediscovery of the Moulin Quignon site, Somme valley, France. In: Scientific Reports. Volume 9, Article No. 13091, 2019, doi: 10.1038 / s41598-019-49400-w .

[4] Marie-Hélène Moncel, Rachel Orliac, Patrick Auguste, and Carole Vercoutère: La séquence de Moulin Quignon est-elle une séquence archéologique? In: L'Anthropologie. Volume 120, No. 4, 2016, pp. 369-388, doi: 10.1016 / j.anthro.2016.05.008

[5] Arnaud Hurel, Jean-Jacques Bahain, Marie-Hélène Moncel et al .: Moulin Quignon: la redécouverte d'un site. In: L'Anthropologie. Volume 120, No. 4, 2016, pp. 428-438, doi: 10.1016 / j.anthro.2016.05.007 .