French geologist Louis Lartet found the first remains of humans who lived a very long time ago but were fully modern in anatomy in 1868. In the Cro-Magnon Cave near the town of Les Eyzies in the Dordogne region of France, Lartet found six skeletons, stone tools, pierced shells, ivory pendants, and carved reindeer antlers.

The term Cro-Magnon now refers to all of the Homo sapiens in Europe who lived prior to the establishment of villages. Although the Cro-Magnon remains provided no evidence of the evolution of the human body, they demonstrated that Europeans had a primitive past just like other peoples that modern Europeans encountered around the world. This implied that the entire human race had a long prehistory. The Cro-Magnon people used stone tools, had no agriculture, and usually lived in caves rather than building structures to live in, at least in the winter. Since the discovery of the Cro-Magnon cave, many other caves have been found throughout Europe that contain Cro-Magnon remains.

Other caves, also throughout Europe, contained remains of humans who were not identical to modern people. The Neandertals also used only stone tools, had no agriculture, and built no structures to live in. The Neandertals were different enough in appearance that they provided some credible evidence that human evolution had occurred in Europe. The Cro-Magnon and Neandertals did not appear to have lived in the same caves at the same time. Until the development of radiometric dating, the ages of the Cro-Magnon and Neandertal caves could not be determined. After dates became available, researchers discovered that the Neandertal remains were much older than most of the Cro-Magnon remains. The Neandertals lived between 200,000 and 30,000 years ago; most Cro-Magnon remains were between about 35,000 and 15,000 years old. This could mean either that the Cro-Magnon had evolved from Neandertal ancestors, or that Cro-Magnon people had migrated from somewhere else and replaced the formerly dominant Neandertals. Most scholars preferred the former interpretation. They believed that Piltdown man demonstrated the origin of humankind in Europe. Piltdown man had evolved into Neandertals, and Neandertals into modern people. Piltdown man turned out to be a hoax, but even after the hoax was revealed the belief persisted that Neandertals were the ancestors of the Cro-Magnon people. . .

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