Page 64 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - France

DISCOVER A Brief History

A BRIEF 1

HISTORY

One of Europe’s oldest nation-states, France has been a cultural melting
pot for millennia and subject to a particularly rich variety of influences.
It has survived thousands of years of invasion, revolution and plagues,
and emerged on the world stage with a style now very much its own.
Prehistoric France
Artifacts found in the Hérault Valley (southern France) indicate
that early humans inhabited France at least 1.5 million years Did You Know?
ago. About 400,000 years ago, Neanderthals started spreading
across France, leaving behind tools in places like the gorges du The caves at Cro-Magnon
Verdon. A skull dated to c. 28,000 BC found at Cro-Magnon gave were excavated by
its name to the earliest known Homo sapiens, who left behind Édouard Lartet, widely
extraordinary art in caves like Lascaux. Around 6000 BC, after the considered the father
end of the Ice Age, a major shift in lifestyle occurred, as people of paleontology.
started settling down to herd animals and cultivate crops.

Timeline of events
28,000 BC 600 BC
The first Venus The Greeks
sculptures are establish a colony
created, which at Marseille.
possibly represent
fertility goddesses. 500 BC
Celtic nobles bury
their dead with
15,000 BC 7000– riches such as the
Prehistoric artists 4500 BC Vix treasure.
begin painting the The Celts arrive
caves of Lascaux. from the west.
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