Grotte Mandrin

The Grotte Mandrin is a cave near Montélimar. It is near the small French town Malaverne, in the Drôme department. It is more like a shelter, that protects from the weather, and not really a cave. It is an archeological site: There are many well-preserved finds from the transition from the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic. The oldest layer of finds is 120,000 years old.

It is named after the French folk hero Louis Mandrin. 

 Location 
The Abri is about  southeast of Malataverne town center. It is at the foot of an exposed limestone cliff at 245 m height.  At the site, the valley is very narrow, only about . Important traffic routes pass through there: the A7, N7, D169 and the high-speed line LGV Méditerranée .

 Topography 
Today, the Grotte Mandrin has a depth of . At some point part of it collapsed. Today, large boulders on the slope below are still there. The covered area was originally much larger. There is an opening of about  facing north. At the front, the cave has a height of about . From the middle of the cave, it gets lower. At the back, the height is about  less. 

In 2013, a fence was built on the space in front of the case. In 2016, video surveillance was installed. n° 32, S. 3–10 (französisch)

 History 
When he found traces Bronze Age settlements there in 1960, Gaston Etienne (1923-2010) recognized that the case was important for archaeology.  Etienne was a councillor in Malaverne. Since 1993, there have been excavations each year. Since 2006, Ludovic Slimak - a research associate from the University of Toulouse and the CNRS is overseeing these excavations. There are twelve cultural layers at the site, In 2014, seven layers had been excavated. The layers date from 42.000 BP (called early Aurigacien) to 56,000 BP (La Quina-Mousterian).PLOS One - Convergent Evidence of Eagle Talons Used by Late Neanderthals in Europe: A Further Assessment on Symbolism (englisch), abgerufen am 6. Oktober 2016

The oldest known evidence of anatomically-modern humans (homo sapiens) in Europe was found in the Batcho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria. This evidence is 45,820 to 43,650 years (Cal BP) old. In February 2022, it was announced that part of a tooth was found at the Mandrin Cave. It came from a layer of the Mandrin Cave under and over which Neanderthal remains have been recovered, but this "baby tooth" has been attributed to a child of Homo sapiens.  Articles in the Journals Science, as well as in Nature, said that the tooth was too badly damaged to be able to tell with certainty if it was from a Neanderthal, or a human.Did Neanderthals and modern humans take turns living in a French cave? Auf: science.org vom 9. Februar 2022.Evidence of Europe’s first Homo sapiens found in French cave. Auf: nature.com vom 9. Februar 2022. 

 Literature 
 Laure Metz, Ludovic Slmak, "La Grotte Mandrin, derniers Néandertaliens et premiers Hommes modernes en vallée du Rhône", Archéologia, n°555, June 2017, pp.20 à 29.
 Pascal Picq, Le retour de Madame Néandertal : comment être sapiens ?, Odile Jacob, 2015, p. 224 .
 Svante Pääbo, Néandertal, à la recherche des génomes perdus, Éditions LLL, 2015, p. 400 .

References

Category:Drôme
Category:Pages with unreviewed translations
Category:Caves of Europe