Terra Amata

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Terra Amata (France)
Terra Amata
Terra Amata
Replica of a stone age hut in Quinson

Terra Amata ( Italian : "Beloved Land") is an archaeological site, named after a dead end street of the same name around 25 meters above the old port of Nice in southern France . During excavation work in 1965, evidence of the world's oldest, around 380,000 year old huts was discovered. At that time the sea level was significantly higher than it is today, so that these huts were built near the beach, according to archaeological findings. Due to the age determination, the finds can be assigned to Homo heidelbergensis .

However, only oval rings made of large stones, which are interrupted at one point, have been preserved in the ground, which is interpreted as an entrance. Blackened pebbles and animal bones were found inside these stone circles, evidence of a fireplace. Presumably the ring made of stones served as a support for the branches on the inside of the ring that were placed against each other at an angle.

During the excavations by Henry de Lumley (1966), 21 dwellings were found: four on an elongated sandbank, six on the beach and eleven on a dune. They were erected repeatedly in the same place in the spring. The oval dwellings varied in length between eight and 15 m and in width between four and almost six meters for the accommodation of 20 to 25 people. A spherical imprint can come from a wooden device in which fruits, seeds or water were stored. Skeletal remains of Homo heidelbergensis were not found, but a 24 cm long footprint was preserved. There were ocher pieces found. The Acheuléen devices were partly made of beach pebbles. The following were hunted: elephants, fish, rhinos, turtles, ibex, birds, wild cattle and wild boars. Oysters, limpets and mussels were collected.

Web links

literature

  • Paola Villa: Terra Amata and the Middle Pleistocene archaeological record of southern France . University of California Press, Berkeley 1983, ISBN 0-520-09662-2 .
  • Henry de Lumley , Yvonne Boone: Les structures d'habitat au Paléolithique inférieur. In: H. de Lumley (ed.): La Préhistoire français. Volume 1. CNRS , Paris 1976, pp. 635-643.
  • Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio : Terra amata . Novel. Gallimard, Paris 1967.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ian Tattersall : Masters of the Planet. The Search for Our Human Origins. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2012, pp. 138-139, ISBN 978-0-230-10875-2

Coordinates: 43 ° 41 ′ 52 ″  N , 7 ° 17 ′ 22 ″  E