2024-01-23 16:38:08
Excavation in progress of the Solutrean level. Gaëlle Pertuisot, Inrap
REPORTAGE – Thousands of hunting tools have been unearthed on an exceptional 22,000-year-old archaeological site in Saône-et-Loire.
Special envoy to Solutré-Pouilly
22,000 years ago, Europe went through the coldest period it had experienced in the last 100,000 years. The ice sheet extends down the Atlantic Ocean to the northern British Isles, Scandinavia and the Baltics. Particularly inhospitable, the continent nevertheless welcomes human populations, established for several thousand years. In the Saône plain, in Burgundy, The Saône-Rhône corridor constitutes a major traffic axis.
This Friday in January, in Solutré-Pouilly (Saône-et-Loire), the coat of snow which covers the rocky peak and the negative temperatures give us a very slight glimpse of the days (probably the mildest…) that we have experienced men and women settled here a little over 20,000 years ago. It was there, under this rock, that the artifacts of a prehistoric culture were unearthed in 1866 which would take the name of the place: the Solutrean.
Stone tools…
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