Category

Caves of Nouvelle-Aquitaine

page 1

Gouffre Lépineux

Grottes de Bétharram

Fontéchevade is a cave in Charente, France, which contains Palaeolithic remains from 200,000 and 120,000 years ago. The fossils consist of two skull fragments. Unlike Neanderthals and Homo sapiens of the time, the frontal skull fragment lacks any development of a brow ridge. This feature led French paleoanthropologists of the time to propose the "pre-sapiens" theory, in which the line to modern humans was said to have branched off before the appearance of the Neanderthals. Subsequent research has cast doubt on the importance of the Fontéchevade evidence.