Description

The sun often shines in Périgord,
but it is the shadows and silence
of the region's decorated caves
that are responsible for the fame
of the banks of the Vézère and
Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, "the world
capital of prehistory". It is in the seclusion of the
great sanctuaries, where the walls are covered
with timeless works of art that visitors perceive
the paradox of how long ago their Homo sapiens
ancestors lived, and yet how remarkably close they
still seem. This valuable visitors' guide reviews past
theories formulated after the first discoveries and
summarises the results of recent scientific research.
These developments are now presented in the
new national museum of prehistory at Les Eyzies.
Themes such as landscapes, ways of life, dwellings
and material culture, burials, art and the first
stirrings of symbolic expression, and their evolution
during the Palaeolithic era, all enable us to
conjure up the life of the long-dead Neanderthal
and Cro-Magnon populations.