Mysterious Cro-Magnon Babies

Anatomical location of “Cro-Magnon 5” bones. Formerly considered as belonging to a single newborn, they could correspond to four different babies • CNRS/INRAP

In the Dordogne, the Cro-Magnon rock shelter, located in the town of Les Eyzies, on the banks of the Vézère, is famous for having given its name to Homo sapiens discovered in Europe and dating from the Upper Palaeolithic. In other words, to those whom paleontology also calls “modern humans”. In 2012, the dating of the remains of the site was evaluated at 27,680 years before our era. Today, "Cro-Magnon babies" are the talk of the town.

In 1868, the year of the discovery of the shelter, the geologist Louis Lartet, in charge of carrying out excavations, unearthed five skeletons, an adult in his fifties, two other men, a woman and a newborn. born. The remains of the latter were grouped under the name "Cro-Magnon 5", and were considered to belong to a single individual. Since then, these bones had only been analyzed in detail once more than 30 years ago. The researchers then identified three or four subjects, but subsequent publications mentioned only one individual.

Make the bones talk

The CNRS - University of Bordeaux laboratory and the University of Washington decided to continue the biological study to learn more about the funerary practices of the site. The bones correspond to fragments of skull, upper limbs and lower limbs.

Three left femurs belong to infants who died in the weeks following their birth, and a piece of humerus and two pieces of skull come from a child who died before his first year, which gives at least four children:three newborns and a little older baby.

If the researchers are certain that it is indeed a funerary site, they are surprised by the association of four young children and four adults, three of whom are elderly and one is sick. This constitutes an original practice for the time, which seems selective, these vulnerable people having been buried together, as if the children were to be accompanied by adults in the afterlife, which is still only one hypothesis among others.