Early Homo Sapiens Sites

Recent findings in South Africa are changing the way we think about what it means to be human.

Cro-Magnon is a now-outmoded word meaning early Homo sapiens sapiens, circa 35,000 to 10,000 years before the present.

What does it mean to be human? Archaeological excavations at one of the earliest Homo sapiens site on the planet, the Klasies River Caves site in South Africa, teach us about our ancestors.

La Ferrassie cave is a Neanderthal site located near the modern town of Les Eyzies in the Dordogne Valley of France.

Levallois is the name archaeologists have given to a distinctive flint knapping technique, which makes up part of the ancient Acheulean and Mousterian artifact assemblages.

The Narmada Valley site in India is known for both a Cretaceous period fossil prehistory, as well as the discovery of an isolated cranium of an archaic Homo Sapiens.

Neanderthals were a type of early hominid that lived on the planet earth between about 100,000 to 30,000 years ago.

Omo Kibish is an ancient rock formation in Ethiopia where excavations by Richard Leakey and others have recovered Homo sapiens remains as old as 125,000 years before the present.

Orgnac 3 is a Middle Paleolithic cave and open air site located in the Rhone Valley of France, near the Ardeche river gorges.

Paviland Cave is a cave in South Wales dated to the Early Upper Paleolithic period between 30,000-20,000 and includes the burial of a young Neanderthal man about 26,000 years ago, which had been stained with red ochre.