Washington (AFP)
Never before have so many footprints of Neanderthals been discovered: a few dozen meters from the Norman shore, in Rozel, under dunes nestled in cliffs, archaeologists have discovered 257 footprints, miraculously preserved since 80,000 years old.
The footprints provide only a "snapshot" of the life of the small group of Neanderthals who occupied the site, then away from the water of one or two kilometers. They suggest that this group had between 10 and 13 people. The vast majority of fingerprints belonged to children and adolescents, but there were also a few adults, one of which was very tall, measuring 1 meter 90, an estimated size from the length of the feet.
These Neanderthals were probably present on the site of the autumn in the spring, told AFP Jérémy Duveau, PhD student at the National Museum of Natural History and one of the co-authors of the study describing the discovery, published in the Accounts- Proceedings of the American Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a prestigious scientific journal.
The site was discovered by an amateur in the 1960s, Yves Roupin, but it is only from 2012, faced with the danger of erosion by wind and tide, that rescue excavations were organized. , three months a year, led by Dominique Cliquet, Regional Directorate for Cultural Affairs of Normandy and CNRS.
Tens of meters of sand were removed by mechanical shovels to reach the interesting layers. Then, with the brush, the researchers discovered the footprints, left at the time in a grassy and muddy soil. How did they survive? Thanks to the sand which, by covering them immediately, preserved them.
- "A kind of miracle" -
To the 257 traces described in the article for the period 2012-2017 are added hundreds of other discoveries since last year.
"Fingerprints have an interest, which is also their fault: they represent a kind of snapshot of the life of individuals over very short periods, which gives us an idea of the composition of the group, but it is possible that they represent the group when certain individuals were outside, "says Jérémy Duveau.
The question becomes: are there few adult fingerprints because Neanderthals died young? Or were the adults elsewhere?
Each has been photographed and modeled in three dimensions. Some have been molded with elastomer, a softer material than plaster. And since 2017, thanks to a new technique of solidification of the soil by a chemical solution, hundreds of traces have been extracted to be preserved.
Those that were not removed were "totally destroyed" by the wind, says Jérémy Duveau.
"Fingerprint conservation requires a kind of miracle - we need to be very lucky," he says.
Before Rozel, only nine confirmed Neanderthal fingerprints had been found in Greece, Romania, Gibraltar and France.
Some of Rozel's casts have already been exhibited, notably at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, and researchers say they want to exhibit more to the general public in the future. In the meantime, all the prints extracted are stored in the depots of the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs of Normandy.
© 2019 AFP