Age of the artistic representations: Aurignacian period, around 40,000 and 29,000 years Before Present.
General description of the destination: It is a modern Museum that introduces archaeological remains from the first culture of the Upper Palaeolithic, including artistic elements on mobile soports. This Museum organizes activities (workshops, temporary expositions…) and visits to the Archaeological site that gave the name to the Aurignacian.
History of the site: It was in 1852 that Jean-Baptiste Bonnemaison, a quarry worker from Aurignac, looking for some stones for the work of a road found a shelter hidden by rocks covered with vegetation. Plunging his arm into a small opening in the hillside, he extracts a bone and discovers, behind a vertical slab, several skeletons and teeth of large mammals.The discovery is then reported to the paleontologist Edouard Lartet who goes to Aurignac in 1860 and began a search of shelter. Digging, it reveals abundant archaeological material: flint, wood worked by man, the remains of a fire place and bones of now extinct fauna (large cave bear, mammoth , cave hyena, woolly rhinoceros …). This major discovery has a double scientific impact for Lartet. It allows him to prove “the geological antiquity of man” and contribute to the development of a new emerging.
Museographic resources description: The museum was opened in 1969, but since 2014 it has been housed in a new, bright building that is open to the public. You will discover the impressive glacial fauna, the means of survival of these prehistoric peoples, thanks to objects from Aurignac but also from other famous Aurignacian sites. Maps, chronological friezes, facsimiles of distant pieces, drawings and videos shed light on this mysterious past.
Completely redesigned, the museum, on one level in a green setting, is located at the exit of Aurignac, a picturesque town crowned by a proud medieval castle. The forest path borders a quiet stream and leads you from the museum to the prehistoric site. The walk (1.2 km), punctuated by informative stops, invites you to take a symbolic journey back to our origins.
