At the dawn of the Upper Palaeolithic

Font-de-Gaume has been open to use by humans and animals for thousands of years, as shown by the presence of animal bones and artefacts on the ground. However, the highly variable conditions under which the remains were collected mean that they are not all equally informative. However, there are other clues on the walls of the cave…

The cave bear, the cave's first occupant

It was an animal, in particular the cave bear, that first occupied Font-de-Gaume. Ursus spelaeus is a very large, vegetarian bear that disappeared at the end of the Ice Age. Its presence was noted as early as the first excavations (1901–1910) and evidence of this can be found throughout almost the entire cave. Excavations by François Prat in 1967–1968 in the second section of the main gallery uncovered the remains of at least ten individuals, both young and female, settled in for hibernation. 

Their death was probably natural; a study (Armand et al., 2004) has shown that some of the bones, particularly ribs, of certain Font-de-Gaume bears have been cut up to retrieve what was of interest (meat, marrow or skin, etc.).

A doubly ambiguous human presence

Who was the first human, hunter or scavenger, to enter the cave? This was undoubtedly the Neanderthals, as a number of Mousterian artefacts have been found on the cave floor. In the area excavated, near the Chamber of the Bison, Chatelperronian tools were found in the same archaeological horizon as that containing the bears. The question of whether the artisans of this industry were still Neanderthals remains unanswered. 

Well before the time of prehistoric artists, the archaeological data from Font-de-Gaume bears provides evidence of this pivotal period between the Middle Palaeolithic and Upper Palaeolithic, when two human species, Neanderthal and anatomically modern man, like the cave bear, frequented the subterranean space.