The Solutrean industry

Archaeological industry

An archaeological industry, normally just "industry", is the name given in the study of prehistory to a consistent range of assemblages connected with a single product, such as the Langdale axe industry...

 is a relatively advanced flint tool-making style of the Upper Palaeolithic, from around 22,000 to 17,000 BP

Before Present

Before Present years is a time scale used in archaeology, geology, and other scientific disciplines to specify when events in the past occurred. Because the "present" time changes, standard practice is to use AD 1950 as the origin of the age scale, reflecting the fact that radiocarbon...

.

Details

"Solutrean" is named after the [type-site]] of Crôt du Charnier at Solutré in the Mâcon

Mâcon

Mâcon is a small city in central France. It is prefecture of the Saône-et-Loire department, in the region of Bourgogne, and the capital of the Mâconnais district. Mâcon is home to over 35,000 residents, called Mâconnais.-Geography:...

 district, Saône-et-Loire

Saône-et-Loire

Saône-et-Loire is a French department, named after the Saône and the Loire rivers between which it lies.-History:When it was formed during the French Revolution, as of March 4, 1790 in fulfillment of the law of December 22, 1789, the new department combined parts of the provinces of southern...

, eastern France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, and appeared around 19,000 BCE. The Solutré site was discovered in 1866 by the French geologist

Geologist

A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using...

 and paleontologist Henry Testot-Ferry

Henry Testot-Ferry

Henry Bernard Alfred Testot-Ferry also known as Henry de Ferry was a French geologist, archeologist and paleontologist...

 (second son of Napoleon's famous cavalryman, General Claude Testot-Ferry

Claude Testot-Ferry

Général Baron Claude Testot-Ferry was a cavalry veteran of the armies of the First French Republic, First French Empire and Bourbon Restoration.-Origins:...

, Baron of the Empire). It is now preserved as the Parc archéologique et botanique de Solutré

Parc archéologique et botanique de Solutré

The Parc archéologique et botanique de Solutré is an archaeological site and botanical garden maintained by the Musée départemental de Préhistoire, Solutré-Pouilly, Saône-et-Loire, Bourgogne, France...

.

The industry was named by Gabriel de Mortillet

Louis Laurent Gabriel de Mortillet

Louis Laurent Gabriel de Mortillet , French anthropologist, was born at Meylan, Isère.-Biography:He was educated at the Jesuit college of Chambéry and at the Paris Conservatoire. Becoming in 1847 proprietor of La Revue indépendante, he was implicated in the Revolution of 1848 and sentenced to two...

 to describe the second stage of his system of cave

Cave

A cave or cavern is a natural underground space large enough for a human to enter. The term applies to natural cavities some part of which is in total darkness. The word cave also includes smaller spaces like rock shelters, sea caves, and grottos.Speleology is the science of exploration and study...

 chronology, following the Mousterian

Mousterian

Mousterian is a name given by archaeologists to a style of predominantly flint tools associated primarily with Homo neanderthalensis and dating to the Middle Paleolithic, the middle part of the Old Stone Age.-Naming:...

, and he considered it synchronous with the third division of the Quaternary

Quaternary

The Quaternary Period is the most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the ICS. It follows the Neogene Period, spanning 2.588 ± 0.005 million years ago to the present...

 period. The era's finds include tool

Tool

A tool is a device that can be used to produce an item or achieve a task, but that is not consumed in the process. Informally the word is also used to describe a procedure or process with a specific purpose. Tools that are used in particular fields or activities may have different designations such...

s, ornamental bead

Bead

A bead is a small, decorative object that is usually pierced for threading or stringing. Beads range in size from under to over in diameter. A pair of beads made from Nassarius sea snail shells, approximately 100,000 years old, are thought to be the earliest known examples of jewellery. Beadwork...

s, and bone

Bone

Bones are rigid organs that constitute part of the endoskeleton of vertebrates. They support, and protect the various organs of the body, produce red and white blood cells and store minerals. Bone tissue is a type of dense connective tissue...

 pin

Pin

A pin is a device used for fastening objects or material together.Pin may also refer to:* Award pin, a small piece of metal or plastic with a pin attached given as an award for some achievement...

s as well as prehistoric art

Prehistoric art

In the history of art, prehistoric art is all art produced in preliterate, prehistorical cultures beginning somewhere in very late geological history, and generally continuing until that culture either develops writing or other methods of record-keeping, or it makes significant contact with another...

.

Solutrean tool-making employed techniques not seen before and not rediscovered for millennia. The Solutrean has relatively finely worked, bifacial points made with Lithic reduction percussion and pressure flaking rather than cruder flintknapping

Flintknapper

Knapping is the shaping of flint, chert, obsidian or other conchoidal fracturing stone through the process of lithic reduction to manufacture stone tools, strikers for flintlock firearms, or to produce flat-faced stones for building or facing walls, and flushwork decoration.- Method :Flintknapping...

. Knapping was done using antler

Antler

Antlers are the usually large, branching bony appendages on the heads of most deer species.-Etymology:Antler originally meant the lowest tine, the "brow tine"...

 baton

Baton

Baton may refer to:In stick-like objects:*Baton , a short thin stick used for directing a musical performance*Baton, a type of club **Baton *Baton , an object transferred by runners in a relay race...

s, hardwood

Hardwood

Hardwood is wood from angiosperm trees . It may also be used for those trees themselves: these are usually broad-leaved; in temperate and boreal latitudes they are mostly deciduous, but in tropics and subtropics mostly evergreen.Hardwood contrasts with softwood...

 batons and soft stone hammers. This method permitted the working of delicate slivers of flint

Flint

Flint is a hard, sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as a variety of chert. It occurs chiefly as nodules and masses in sedimentary rocks, such as chalks and limestones. Inside the nodule, flint is usually dark grey, black, green, white, or brown in colour, and...

 to make light projectiles and even elaborate barbed and tanged arrowhead

Arrowhead

An arrowhead is a tip, usually sharpened, added to an arrow to make it more deadly or to fulfill some special purpose. Historically arrowheads were made of stone and of organic materials; as human civilization progressed other materials were used...

s. Large thin spear-heads; scrapers with edge not on the side but on the end; flint knives and saw

Saw

A saw is a tool that uses a hard blade or wire with an abrasive edge to cut through softer materials. The cutting edge of a saw is either a serrated blade or an abrasive...

s, but all still chipped, not ground or polished; long spear-points, with tang and shoulder on one side only, are also characteristic implements of this industry. Bone and antler were used as well.

The Solutrean may be seen as a transitory stage between the flint implements of the Mousterian and the bone implements of the Magdalenian

Magdalenian

The Magdalenian , refers to one of the later cultures of the Upper Paleolithic in western Europe, dating from around 17,000 BP to 9,000 BP...

 epochs. Faunal finds include horse

Horse

The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...

, reindeer

Reindeer

The reindeer , also known as the caribou in North America, is a deer from the Arctic and Subarctic, including both resident and migratory populations. While overall widespread and numerous, some of its subspecies are rare and one has already gone extinct.Reindeer vary considerably in color and size...

, mammoth

Mammoth

A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus. These proboscideans are members of Elephantidae, the family of elephants and mammoths, and close relatives of modern elephants. They were often equipped with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair...

, cave lion

Cave lion

Panthera leo spelaea also known as the European or Eurasian cave lion, is an extinct subspecies of lion known from fossils and many examples of prehistoric art.-Physical characteristics:This subspecies was one of the largest lions...

, rhinoceros

Rhinoceros

Rhinoceros , also known as rhino, is a group of five extant species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. Two of these species are native to Africa and three to southern Asia....

, bear

Bear

Bears are mammals of the family Ursidae. Bears are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans, with the pinnipeds being their closest living relatives. Although there are only eight living species of bear, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the Northern...

 and aurochs

Aurochs

The aurochs , the ancestor of domestic cattle, were a type of large wild cattle which inhabited Europe, Asia and North Africa, but is now extinct; it survived in Europe until 1627....

. Solutrean finds have been also made in the caves of Les Eyzies and Laugerie Haute, and in the Lower Beds of Creswell Crags

Creswell Crags

Creswell Crags is a limestone gorge on the border between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, England near the villages of Creswell, Whitwell and Elmton...

 in Derbyshire, England. The industry first appeared in modern-day Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 and disappears from the archaeological record around 15,000 BCE.

The Solutrean Hypothesis in North American archaeology

This hypothesises similarities between the Solutrean industry and the later Clovis culture

Clovis culture

The Clovis culture is a prehistoric Paleo-Indian culture that first appears 11,500 RCYBP , at the end of the last glacial period, characterized by the manufacture of "Clovis points" and distinctive bone and ivory tools...

 / Clovis point

Clovis point

Clovis points are the characteristically-fluted projectile points associated with the North American Clovis culture. They date to the Paleoindian period around 13,500 years ago. Clovis fluted points are named after the city of Clovis, New Mexico, where examples were first found in 1929.At the right...

s of North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, and suggests that people with Solutrean tool technology crossed the Ice Age Atlantic by moving along the pack ice edge, using survival skills similar to that of modern Eskimo

Eskimo

Eskimos or Inuit–Yupik peoples are indigenous peoples who have traditionally inhabited the circumpolar region from eastern Siberia , across Alaska , Canada, and Greenland....

 people. The migrants arrived in northeastern North America and served as the donor culture for what eventually developed into Clovis tool-making technology.
Archaeologists Dennis Stanford

Dennis Stanford

Dennis J. Stanford in Cherokee, Iowa is an archaeologist and Director of the Paleo-Indian Program at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution. Along with Prof...

 and Bruce Bradley suggest that the Clovis point

Clovis point

Clovis points are the characteristically-fluted projectile points associated with the North American Clovis culture. They date to the Paleoindian period around 13,500 years ago. Clovis fluted points are named after the city of Clovis, New Mexico, where examples were first found in 1929.At the right...

 derived from the points of the Solutrean culture of southern France (19,000BP) through the Cactus Hill

Cactus Hill

Cactus Hill is an archaeological site in southeastern Virginia, United States. The site sits on sand dunes above the Nottoway River and lies about 45 miles south of Richmond. The site is owned by the International Paper Corporation....

 points of Virginia (16,000BP) to the Clovis point

Clovis point

Clovis points are the characteristically-fluted projectile points associated with the North American Clovis culture. They date to the Paleoindian period around 13,500 years ago. Clovis fluted points are named after the city of Clovis, New Mexico, where examples were first found in 1929.At the right...

. This would mean that people would have had to move from the Bay of Biscay

Bay of Biscay

The Bay of Biscay is a gulf of the northeast Atlantic Ocean located south of the Celtic Sea. It lies along the western coast of France from Brest south to the Spanish border, and the northern coast of Spain west to Cape Ortegal, and is named in English after the province of Biscay, in the Spanish...

 across the edge of the Atlantic ice sheet to North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

. Supporters of this hypothesis believe it would have been feasible using traditional Eskimo

Eskimo

Eskimos or Inuit–Yupik peoples are indigenous peoples who have traditionally inhabited the circumpolar region from eastern Siberia , across Alaska , Canada, and Greenland....

 techniques still in use today, while others argue that the conditions at the time would not have made such a journey likely.

The idea of a Clovis-Solutrean link remains rather controversial and does not enjoy wide acceptance. The hypothesis is challenged by large gaps in time between the Clovis and Solutrean eras, a lack of evidence of Solutrean seafaring, lack of specific Solutrean features in Clovis technology, and other issues.

Arthur J. Jelinek, an anthropologist who noted similarities between Solutrean and Clovis styles in a 1971 study, noted that the great geographical and temporal separation of the two cultures made a direct connection unlikely. He also noted that crossing the Atlantic with the technology of the time would have been difficult if not impossible, an observation repeated by Lawrence G. Straus, who wrote that "there are no representations of boats and no evidence whatsoever either of seafaring or of the ability to make a living mainly or solely from the ocean during the Solutrean." However, Straus excavated Solutrean artifacts along what is now a coastline in Cantabria

Cantabria

Cantabria is a Spanish historical region and autonomous community with Santander as its capital city. It is bordered on the east by the Basque Autonomous Community , on the south by Castile and León , on the west by the Principality of Asturias, and on the north by the Cantabrian Sea.Cantabria...

, which was not coastal at the time of Solutreans, finding seashell

Seashell

A seashell or sea shell, also known simply as a shell, is a hard, protective outer layer created by an animal that lives in the sea. The shell is part of the body of the animal. Empty seashells are often found washed up on beaches by beachcombers...

s and estuarine fish at the sites, but no evidence of exploiting deep sea resources. In addition, the dates of the proposed transitional sites and the Solutrean period in Europe only overlap at the extremes.

Another challenge to the hypothesis involves the apparent lack of cultural or artistic practices being passed on from Solutrean culture to Clovis culture, for instance the style of Solutrean artwork found at Altamira

Altamira (cave)

Altamira is a cave in Spain famous for its Upper Paleolithic cave paintings featuring drawings and polychrome rock paintings of wild mammals and human hands....

 in Spain and Lascaux

Lascaux

Lascaux is the setting of a complex of caves in southwestern France famous for its Paleolithic cave paintings. The original caves are located near the village of Montignac, in the department of Dordogne. They contain some of the best-known Upper Paleolithic art. These paintings are estimated to be...

 in France. In response, Bradley and Stanford contend that it was "a very specific subset of the Solutrean who formed the parent group that adapted to a maritime environment and eventually made it across the north Atlantic ice-front to colonize the east coast of the Americas" and that this group may not have shared all Solutrean cultural traits. A carved piece of bone depicting a mammoth

Mammoth

A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus. These proboscideans are members of Elephantidae, the family of elephants and mammoths, and close relatives of modern elephants. They were often equipped with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair...

 found near the Vero man site in Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

 has been dated to 13,000 to 20,000 years ago. It is described as possibly being the oldest art object yet found in the Americas, and may provide support for the Solutrean hypothesis. Art historian Barbara Olins has compared the Vero mammoth carving to "Franco-Cantabrian" drawings and engravings of mammoths. She notes that the San

Bushmen

The indigenous people of Southern Africa, whose territory spans most areas of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola, are variously referred to as Bushmen, San, Sho, Barwa, Kung, or Khwe...

 of southern Africa developed a realistic style of depicting animals similar to the "Franco-Cantabrian" style, indicating that an independent development of such a style in North America is possible.

In a 2008 study of relevant oceanographic

Oceanography

Oceanography , also called oceanology or marine science, is the branch of Earth science that studies the ocean...

 data from the time-period in question, Kieran Westley and Justin Dix concluded that "it is clear from the paleoceanographic and paleo-environmental data that the LGM

Last Glacial Maximum

The Last Glacial Maximum refers to a period in the Earth's climate history when ice sheets were at their maximum extension, between 26,500 and 19,000–20,000 years ago, marking the peak of the last glacial period. During this time, vast ice sheets covered much of North America, northern Europe and...

 North Atlantic does not fit the descriptions provided by the proponents of the Solutrean Atlantic Hypothesis. Although ice use and sea mammal hunting may have been important in other contexts, in this instance, the conditions militate against an ice-edge-following, maritime-adapted European population reaching the Americas."; taking the position that according to their analysis of the evidence they examined (primarily the believed location of the ice shelf at the time in question), they do not believe the Solutrian culture or elements of it could have undertaken any transoceanic crossing into North America utilizing the glacial ice-sheets. It is however difficult to draw any definitive conclusions from studies undertaken thus-far as the most conclusive evidence on this question would be found in coastal settlements from the time-period, but the overwhelming majority of the coastline from the time-period is now submerged under the Atlantic Ocean and at present inaccessible to intensive archeological research. As such there has yet to be any reliable proof from either proponents or opponents of the theory, and it remains an unresolved issue in the field of Archeology.

See also

• Synoptic table of the principal old world prehistoric cultures
  Synoptic table of the principal old world prehistoric cultures
  The synoptic table of the principal old world prehistoric cultures gives a rough picture of the relationships between the various principal cultures of prehistory outside the Americas, Antarctica, Australia and Oceania...
  
  
• Franco-Cantabrian region
• Gravettian
  Gravettian
  thumb|right|Burins to the Gravettian culture.The Gravettian toolmaking culture was a specific archaeological industry of the European Upper Palaeolithic era prevalent before the last glacial epoch. It is named after the type site of La Gravette in the Dordogne region of France where its...
  
  

External links

• Clovis and Solutrean: Is There a Common Thread? by James M. Chandler
• Stone Age Columbus BBC TV programme summary
• "America's Stone Age Explorers" transcript of 2004 NOVA program on PBS
• Images of Solutrean artifacts