Cro-Magnon

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Cro-Magnon

Cro-Magnon (French ) is one of the main types of Homo sapiens
Archaic Homo sapiens

The term Archaic Homo sapiens refers generally to the earliest members of the species Homo sapiens. Fossils categorized as archaic Homo sapiens have many of the same features as modern humans with general tendencies toward features of earlier Hominina species....
of the European

Paleolithic Europe

Homo erectus and Neanderthals settled in Paleolithic Europe long before the emergence of modern humans, Human. The bones of the earliest Europeans are found in Dmanisi, Georgia , dated at 1.8 million years before the present....
Upper Paleolithic

Upper Paleolithic

The Upper Paleolithic is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. Very broadly it dates to between 40,000 and 9th millennium BC years ago, roughly coinciding with the appearance of "high" culture and before the advent of agriculture....
, living approximately 40,000 to 10,000 years ago. It is named after the cave of Crô-Magnon in southwest France

Prehistoric France

Prehistoric France is the period in the human occupation of the geographical area covered by present-day France which extended through prehistory and ended in the Iron Age with the Celtic "La T?ne culture"....
, where the first specimen was found.

The term falls outside the usual naming conventions for early humans

Human evolution

Human evolution, or anthropogenesis, is the part of biological evolution concerning the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species from other hominans, great apes and placental mammals....
and is used in a general sense to describe the oldest modern people in Europe

Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
, though also a specific (but very frequent) subtype among their fossil remains.

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Encyclopedia

Paleolithic Europe

Upper Paleolithic

Prehistoric France

Human evolution

Europe

Excavations

The geologist Louis Lartet

Louis Lartet

Louis Lartet was a France geologist and paleontologist. He discovered the original Cro-Magnon man skeletons.Born the son of ?douard Lartet in Seissan in the d?partement in France of Gers, he continued his father's researches....
discovered the first five skeleton

Skeleton

Dordogne

Dordogne is a departments of France in central France named after the Dordogne River....
, France

France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
. The rock shelter contained a large cavity which protected the fossils. The type specimen from this find is Cro-Magnon 1

Cro-Magnon 1

Cro-Magnon 1 is a fossilized skull of the species Homo sapiens. It was discovered in Les Eyzies, France by Louis Lartet in 1868.It is estimated to be 30,000 years old....
. The skeletons showed the same high forehead, upright posture and slender (gracile) skeleton as modern humans. Other specimens have since come to light in other parts of Europe and in the Middle East

Middle East

File:GreaterMiddleEast1.pngThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, western Asia, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East....
. From a genetic perspective, the European individuals probably descended from an East Africa

East Africa

East Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN subregion, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...
n origin via South Asia

South Asia

South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries on the west and the east....
, Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south....
, the Middle East

Middle East

North Africa

North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan Africa.Geopolitically, the United Nations subregion of Northern Africa includes the following seven countries or territories:...
[https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html] (cromagnoid populations of Mechta El Arbi and Afalou bou Rummel).

The condition and placement of the remains along with pieces of shell and animal tooth in what appears to have been pendant

Pendant

A pendant is a hanging object, generally attached to a necklace or an earring. In modern French language this is a the gerund form of ?hanging? ....
s or necklaces raises the question of whether they were buried intentionally. If Cro-Magnons buried their dead intentionally it suggests they had a knowledge of ritual

Ritual

A ritual is a set of repeated actions, often thought to have symbolic value, the performance of which is usually prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community by religious or political laws because of the perceived efficacy of those actions....
, by burying their dead with necklaces and tools, or an idea of disease

Disease

A disease or medical condition is an abnormal condition of an organism that impairs bodily functions, associated with specific symptoms and Medical signs....
and that the bodies needed to be contained.

Analysis of the pathology

Pathology

Pathology is the study and diagnosis of disease through examination of Organ , tissue , bodily fluids and whole bodies . The term also encompasses the related science study of disease processes, called General pathology....
of the skeleton

Skeleton

In biology, a skeleton is a rigid framework that provides protection and structure in many types of animal, particularly those of the phylum Chordata and of the superphylum Ecdysozoa....
s shows that the humans of this period led a physically difficult life. In addition to infection, several of the individuals found at the shelter had fused vertebrae in their necks, indicating traumatic injury; the adult female found at the shelter had survived for some time with a skull fracture. As these injuries would be life threatening even today, this suggests that Cro-Magnons believed in community support and took care of each others' injuries.

Cro-Magnon life

Cro-Magnons lived from about 45,000 to 10,000 years ago in the Upper Paleolithic

Upper Paleolithic

Pleistocene

The Pleistocene is the epoch from 1.8 million to 10,000 years Before Present covering the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....
epoch. Cro-Magnon were anatomically modern, only differing from their modern day descendants in Europe by their more robust physiology and slightly larger cranial capacity

Cranial capacity

Cranial capacity is a measure of the volume of the interior of the cranium of those vertebrates who have both a cranium and a brain. The most commonly used unit of measure is the cubic centimetre or cubic centimetre....
. Of modern nationalities, Finns

Finnish people

The terms Finns and Finnish people are used in English to mean "a native or inhabitant of Finland". They are also used to refer to the ethnic group historically associated with Finland or Fennoscandia, and they are only used in that sense here....
are closest to Cro-Magnons in terms of anthropological

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humans and humanity in its totality. Anthropology has origins in the natural sciences, and the humanities. In Great Britain it was originally divided into physical anthropology and cultural anthropology, which itself was divided into archaeology, technology, ethnology and sociology ....
measurements.

Surviving Cro-Magnon artifacts include huts, cave painting

Cave painting

Cave paintings are paintings on cave walls and ceilings, and the term is used especially for those dating to prehistoric times. The earliest known European cave paintings date to 32,000 years ago....
s, carvings and antler-tipped spears. The remains of tools suggest that they knew how to make woven clothing. They had huts, constructed of rocks, clay, bones, branches, and animal hide/fur. These early humans used manganese

Manganese

Manganese is a chemical element, designated by the symbol Mn. It has the atomic number 25. It is found as a Oxidation state in nature , and in many minerals....
and iron oxide

Oxide

An oxide is a chemical compound contaning at least one oxygen atom as well as at least one other element. Most of the Earth's crust consists of oxides....
s to paint pictures and may have created the first calendar

Calendar

A calendar is a system of organize days for a social, religious, commercial or administrative purpose. This organization is done by giving names to periods of time ? typically days, weeks, months and years....
around 15,000 years ago.

The flint tools found in association with the remains at Cro-Magnon have associations with the Aurignacian

Aurignacian

The Aurignacian culture is an archaeological culture of the Upper Palaeolithic, located in Europe and southwest Asia. It dates to between 32,000 and 26,000 Before Christ....
culture that Lartet

Louis Lartet

Neanderthal

The Neanderthal , or Neandertal, is an extinct member of the Homo genus that is known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia....
s, and are often credited with causing the latter's extinction, although modern humans seem to have coexisted with Neanderthals for up to 60,000 years in the Levant

Levant

The Levant describes, traditionally, the Eastern Mediterranean at large, but can be used as a geographical term that denotes a large area in Western Asia formed by the lands bordering the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean, roughly bounded on the north by the Taurus Mountains, on the south by the Arabian Desert, and on the west by the M...
and for more than 15,000 years in France.

Etymology

The "Cro-Magnon" rock shelter, located at Les Eyzies in the Dordogne

Dordogne

Dordogne is a departments of France in central France named after the Dordogne River....
in France

France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
, probably owes its name to a compound of two elements:

Cro is presumably a dialectal form of creux, meaning "cavity" or "hollow"; such forms as crau, cro, crouè are found in French dialects, and all probably derive, through Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin

Vulgar Latin is a blanket term covering the popular dialects and sociolects of the Latin which diverged from each other in the early Middle Ages, evolving into the Romance languages by the 9th century....
*crosus (not attested), from a Celtic root.
Magnon is almost certainly the augmentative
Augmentative

An augmentative is a Affix or Prefix added to a noun in order to convey the sense of greater intensity, often though not primarily indicating a larger size....
form of the Old French
Old French

Old French was the Romance languages dialect continuum spoken in territories which span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from around 1000 to 1300....
adjective magne, from Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
magnus, meaning "large" or "great" and ultimately deriving from the Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European language

The Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, linguistic reconstruction common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans....
root * (related to English much).

Thus, the probable original meaning is "great cavity".

According to information on display in Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, however, Magnon was simply the name of the proprietor who owned the land on which the cave is located when Lartet made his discovery in 1868.

Genetics

A 2003 study on Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal

Neanderthal

The Neanderthal , or Neandertal, is an extinct member of the Homo genus that is known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia....
mitochondrial DNA

Mitochondrial DNA

Mitochondrial DNA is the DNA located in organelles called mitochondrion. Most other DNA present in eukaryotic organisms is found in the cell nucleus....
, published by an Italo-Spanish research team led by David Caramelli, concluded that Neanderthals were far outside the modern human range, while Cro-Magnons were well in the average of modern Europeans. mtDNA retrieved from two Cro-Magnon specimen

Specimen

In biology, a Laboratory specimen is an individual animal, part of an animal, plant, part of a plant, or microorganism used as a representative to study the properties of the whole population of that species or subspecies....
s was identified as Haplogroup N

Haplogroup N (mtDNA)

In human genetics, Haplogroup N is a human mitochondrial DNA haplogroup.An enormous haplogroup spanning many continents, the macro-haplogroup N is a branch of the mtDNA haplogroup Haplogroup L3 , and is believed to have originated in West Asia some 50,000 to 80,000 years before present, with 65,000 years being thought of as the most likely...
. Haplogroup N is found among modern populations of the Middle East

Middle East

North Africa

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area and, with over 4 billion people, it contains more than 60% of the world's current human population....
, and its descendant haplogroup

Haplogroup

In the study of molecular evolution, a haplogroup is a group of similar haplotypes that share a common ancestor with a single nucleotide polymorphism mutation....
s are found among modern Eurasian

Eurasian

Eurasian, also Euroasian or Euro-Asian can mean:...
and Native American

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas, their descendants, and many ethnic groups who identify with those peoples....
populations. [https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html].

Cro-Magnon

Excavations

Cro-Magnon life

Etymology

Genetics

See also