La Chapelle aux Saints – A Lower Paleolithic site
La Chapelle aux Saints is a small village in the Sourdoire Valley, southeast of Limousin in the Limousin region.
It gained international renown on August 3, 1908, with the discovery of a young Neanderthal burial at a site called La Bouffia Bonneval.
This discovery marked the culmination of three years of excavations led by brothers Jean and Amédée Bouyssonie, in collaboration with Louis Bardon. The team indeed unearthed approximately 1,000 artefacts, including flint tools, weapons, and a wide variety of bones from diverse animal species, such as reindeer, ox, horse, wolf, fox, and even woolly rhinoceros.
These discoveries provided compelling evidence that La Chapelle aux Saints was inhabited during the Mousterian period, a major phase of the Lower Palaeolithic.
Discovery of a Neanderthal young adult in La Chapelle aux Saints
The key discovery of these excavations was the unearthing of a nearly complete skeleton belonging to a young adult Neanderthal.
His body lay in a pit 30 cm deep, 1.45 m long, and 1 m wide.
The young man had been carefully buried in a supine position, with his legs bent and his head inclined towards his chest. Flint tools and various animal bones surrounded the body.
A similar Neanderthal burial site was discovered the following year at La Ferrassie, in the village of Savignac-de-Miremont, in the Dordogne region.
These major discoveries have profoundly changed our understanding of Neanderthals, challenging preconceived notions and shedding valuable light on their burial practices and sophisticated cultural behaviours.
A new insight on Neanderthal culture
Indeed, far from the popular image of primitive and brutal beings, Neanderthals practised elaborate funerary rituals, strongly suggesting a remarkable social and religious awareness.
The municipality of La Chapelle aux Saints founded the Musée de l’Homme de Neanderthal (Neanderthal Museum) in 1996 to showcase numerous artefacts as well as a replica of the grave of the “50,000-year-old Neanderthal boy.” who lived during the Mousterian period.
The term “Neanderthal” was coined after the discovery in 1856 of the first Neanderthal skeletons in the Neander Valley, near Düsseldorf, Germany.
These enigmatic hominids appeared around 200,000 years ago, and mysteriously disappeared some 160,000 years later. However, recent discoveries indicate that they did not simply vanish, but interbred with modern humans, or Homo sapiens, between 50,000 and 60,000 BC.
Genetic studies have indeed revealed that Neanderthals differed from Homo sapiens by only 0.12% of their DNA. Some experts even argue that they should not be classified as Homo neanderthalensis, but rather as a subspecies of Homo sapiens, known as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, to highlight the close relationship between Neanderthals and modern humans.
Department of Corrèze – Limousin region
Coordinates: Lat 44.987241 – Long 1.725199
Photos via Wikimedia Creative Commons: Skull by PLoS CC BY 2.5 – Rock shelter burial ground in La Bouffia and Reconstruction of the grave by 120 / V. Mourre CC BY-SA 3.0
