Grotte du Vallonnet
Grotte du Vallonnet is an archaeological site located near Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, between Monaco and Menton, in France, that was first discovered in 1958. Stone tools found at the site have been dated to between 1 and 1.05 million years old, making it one of the earliest sites of human settlement known in Europe. Description. The cave of Vallonnet is located on the western slope of Cap Martin, about above the Bay of Menton, at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in the Alpes-Maritimes Department in France. It opens onto a ravine with a small creek, the Vallonnet, which  drops down to the bay. The mountain is a massif of calcite-dolomitic rock formed during the Jurassic period, covered with puddingstone and hardened sands of the Miocene. The porch of the cave is narrow and low, and opens to a corridor in length, followed by a high room. Discovery. The cave was discovered in 1958 by 13 year old Marianne Poire, who regularly visited the cave to collect pieces of calcite and one day showed them to René Pascal, an employee of a Monte Carlo casino and an amateur prehistorian. Marianne then led her parents, Pascal and others to  the entry of the cave. The first systematic excavations were carried out in 1962. Layers of sediment. The excavations found five distinct layers of sediment in the cave: Animal species. Layer III contained the most important finds in the cave; a collection of animal bones, and 11 simple tools used by human visitors. It appears that the cave was used as a dining room by large carnivores, notably the bear, the panther, the saber-tooth tiger, and the large hyena. These brought to the cave the carcasses of herbivores; deer, bison, small bovides, rhinoceros, horses, and boars. When the predators  were not in the cave, it was used by humans, who left the tools. The bones of 25 different species of mammals were found in the cave, all characteristic of the lower Pleistocene age. Besides those named above, bones were found of the Eurasian jaguar ("Panthera gombaszoegensis"), the leopard, ("Acinonyx pardinensis") the meridional elephant ("Mammuthus meridionalis"), and others. Other species were found from the middle Pleistocene period, including an early species of wolf ("Canis mosbachensis"), an early fox ("Alopex praeglacialis)", and a cave lynx ("Lynx spelaea"). Tools. About 100 basic tools made by man were found in the cave. Most  were made of calcaire (limestone), less often of sandstone, with a small number of tools made of quartz and flint. Percussion, or pounding, tools, were the most frequent. These included chopping tools, of poor quality. None of the tools had been reworked to improve their quality. The middle part of a femur bone of a bison was found which showed sign of being crafted into a pounding tool. While most of the bones in the cave showed that they had been broken by the teeth of predators, a number of bones had marks that showed that they had been broken  by these early tools. It appears that the early human visitors to Vallonnet cave used their stone tools to break bones and eat the marrow inside. There were no indications of fire in the cave; fire had apparently not yet been domesticated. It appears that the people who visited the cave were not primarily hunters, but scavengers, who lived on the meat of animals killed by predators. There were also no signs that they lived in the cave., Bibliography. Henry de Lumley, "La Grande Histoire des premiers hommes européens", Odile Jacob, Paris, 2010. ()