Europe oldest village

In the late 60's -early 70's archaeologist Henry de Lumley uncovered a series of 10 huge buildings ranging from 7-16 m. long and 4 -7 m. wide, at Terra Amata near Nice in France. The buildings all had hearths, a sleeping area, fossilized human faeces, piles of bones and coprolites and considerable amounts of Acheulean stone tools as well as their debitage was found in a work area.

The bones found mostly came from ancient elephants, meadow rhinoceros, deer, stag, rabbit, and wild boar as well as smaller mammals. In addition lots of seasonal seed were found too.

The buildings have been estimated as being between 380,000 and 400,000 thousand years old and the culprit for the construction Homo Erectus. Apart from the obvious value of the finds, giving the finest insight into the life of Homo Erectus and showing them to be far more advanced than anyone ever perceived, another issue was raised.

Just how much communication would these ancestors of man have needed to create a community of this complexity. When speech was first used has been a constant topic of debate amongst archaeologists. The first clear evidence being 50,000 year ago and modern humans responcible. However there are no biological reason why ancestors of humans couldn't talk. So Terra Amata may be the first evidence that language wasn't a human invention.

Homo Erectus (middle)