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7,000 Year-Old Human Settlement Found In Paris, France

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Bianca
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« on: June 26, 2008, 01:35:23 am »









                                         7,000-year-old human settlement found in Paris, France
 




Paris, June 26:
(INRAP)

Archaeologists said they had found flint arrowheads and other objects in Paris that were evidence
of human settlement some 7,000 years ago, the oldest such site ever discovered in the French capital.

The site on the banks of the river Seine was occupied by hunter-gatherers who also left a stoneware instrument they used to make arrowheads and flint scrapers for working on animal skins, said the French Archaeological Research Institute, (INRAP).

They were nomads who hunted deer and boar, said INRAP`s Benedicte Souffi, who led excavations at the site in what is today the 15th district of the French capital.

She said it appeared that the people came to the site to gather flint from the alluvial deposits of the Seine.

Archaeologists were able to work out the age of the settlement by examining bone fragments they found there, she said.

 
www.archaeologynews.com
« Last Edit: June 26, 2008, 01:36:57 am by Bianca » Report Spam   Logged

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Ashley Washington
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« Reply #1 on: June 27, 2008, 02:46:44 am »

Dig shows Paris is 3,000 years older than first thought

By John Lichfield in Paris
Thursday, 26 June 2008

 
Paris has long been known to be a very old city but its history as a settlement has just been extended by more than 3,000 years.


An archaeological dig, whose findings were revealed yesterday, moves back Paris's first known human occupation to about 7600BC, in the Mesolithic period between the two stone ages.

An area about the size of a football field on the south-western edge of the city, close to the banks of the river Seine, has yielded thousands of flint arrowheads and fragments of animal bone. The site, between the Paris ring road and the city's helicopter port, is believed by archaeologists to have been used, nearly 10,000 years ago, as a kind of sorting and finishing station for flint pebbles washed up on the banks of the river. Once the dig is complete, the site will be occupied by a plant for sorting and recycling the refuse generated by the two million Parisians of the 21st century.

"You could say that we've come full circle," said Bénédicte Souffi, one of the two archaeologists in charge of the site. "Our ancestors were sorting rubbish from usable objects here in 7600BC. We are going to be doing much the same thing on a more elaborate scale. Maybe, there is a lesson there."

The oldest previous human settlement discovered within the Paris city boundaries dates back to about 4500BC – a fishing and hunting village beside the Seine at Bercy near the Gare de Lyon railway station. The new exploration – by Inrap, the French government agency for "preventive" archaeology on sites where new building is imminent – pushes back the history of the city to the mysterious period between the Old and New stone ages.

During the Mesolithic period, the "big game" of the Paleolithic, such as mammoth and reindeer, had disappeared from western Europe. The scattered human bands were still hunter-gatherers, and not yet farmers, but they lived in temperate forests and hunted with bows and arrows rather than spears.

The site in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, about a mile from the Eiffel Tower, has been preserved by silt from the frequent flooding of the Seine. Archaeologists believe that it was used for many centuries during the Mesolithic period, perhaps for periods of only a few weeks at a time, as a place to prospect for, and sort out, flint pebbles for cutting into arrowheads. The dig has also unearthed larger instruments made from granite. They include an almost perfectly round hand-held pounder the size of a billiard ball, and long stone blades, possibly used for making arrow shafts or scraping animal skins.

Evidence on the site suggests that it remained in use as a human settlement, on and off, until the iron age, from 800 to 500BC. Julius Caesar reported that the site of the capital was occupied by a Gaulish tribe called the Parisii in 53BC.

The Roman city of Lutece was established soon afterwards, beginning in what is now the fifth arrondissement, on the left bank of the Seine.

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Ashley Washington
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« Reply #2 on: June 27, 2008, 02:47:56 am »

Too bad there aren't more pictures yet!
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