Aurignacian
adjective · first attested 1900s
A village of a few hundred people in the Pyrenean foothills gave its name to the first modern humans in Europe.
Of or relating to the early Upper Paleolithic culture of Europe, roughly 43,000 to 26,000 years ago.
Record
- Relationship
- Named from the place
- Confidence
- Well attestedThe place link is the standard scholarly account.
- Attested
- 1900s
- Part of speech
- adjective
Explanations here are written for this atlas. Dictionary text is not copied; the sources are linked so the claim can be checked.
- Step 1
Aurignac
- In English
Aurignacian
Human bones were found walled into a rock shelter at Aurignac, in Haute-Garonne, in 1852, and Edouard Lartet excavated the site in 1860. Henri Breuil applied the village's name to the wider tool industry in the early 1900s, in the course of a long argument among prehistorians about where it belonged in the sequence. The oldest known figurative sculpture and the oldest musical instruments are now classed as Aurignacian.