The Paleolithic means is one period of the Prehistory which falls under the continuity of the Paleolithic inferior.

In Europe, it begins around 300 ' 000 years and is completed around 30 ' 000 years with the disappearance of the Man of Néanderthal and the arrival of Human anatomically modern (Homo sapiens) come from the Middle East.

This period is marked by the appearance of a set of new cultural features: she sees for example spreading and diversifying the use of the improved tools (scrapers, dentils, etc). These tools are produced starting from glares output at the expense of prepared blocks of raw material, called nucleus. One of the methods of cutting up of glares, identified as of the XIX ^E century and relatively well-known, is the Levallois method : it is characterized by the possibility of outputting in a way repeated of the glares whose form was given before their detachment during the preparation of nucleus.

In Europe, the principal cultural event of the Paleolithic means is Moustérien. The principal craftsman of Moustérien is Gay the neanderthalensis, or Man of Néanderthal: this cousin without descent of the modern Man (Homo sapiens) presented a bulky skull to the reducing face, the marked know-orbital torus, and the chin practically absent. These characteristics are known for us in particular thanks to the fossil discoveries of bones of Saccopastore, of Assembles Circeo (Italy), of Gibraltar in the South of the Iberian peninsula, of Vault-with-Saint, Ferrassie, Quina (France), of Spy (Belgium) and of course of Néanderthal (Germany). If the first descriptions wanted to make this man rough deprived of any intellectual faculty, the multiplication of the discoveries makes it possible today to draw up very an other portrait of the Neanderthal man.

Levels of knowledge
Several levels of knowledge make it possible to try this reconstitution: first of all, each category of vestiges - stones and bones - has its significance and raises of a kind of study private individual; the relation between the various categories - simultaneous presence, proportion, space relation - constitutes the second level of knowledge. Lastly, the whole of the layer forms a whole - different from the sum of the parts - which it acts to interpret.  

This vision, where the layer becomes itself archaeological object of study, was essential during these thirty last years, leading directing fossil (point moustérienne or Quina scraper) to the reconstitution of a lifestyle included in a context of interaction between the man and the surrounding medium. One passed little by little from the concept of complex geographical to chronological key to that of a ground of pilot habitat of the behavior and practices of the man, the two approaches being supplemented.  

The choice of the habitats
The tools are not isolated any more from their context: the excavation makes it possible to balance their numerical importance, that the old collections overestimated considerably. Their technological study is carried out raw material with the end product (tools): the origin of the raw material, the possibilities of provisioning, the choices and the constraints related to its quality are elements which supplement today the study of the techniques of cutting up and that of the techniques of shaping. Levallois cutting up with great regular glares is present in the loess like areas of Northern Europe, rich in flint of good quality, but also in Bergeracois and on the plates of Vercors. On the contrary, when the moustériens settled in caves far from sources of flint, as in Arcy-sur-Cure, they used them to the heart.  

Displacements and dietary habits
Several layers excavated at the end of the XX E century make it possible to better understand how the Neanderthal men lived.  

The layer of Mauran
The layer of Mauran, located in Haute-Garonne, delivered a very great quantity of remainders of bisons, with which were associated small dentils of flint and quarzite as well as large chopper tools and rough rollers. The bisons were driven out then eaten. The rollers were used to break the diaphyses of the bones of the members, whose men ate marrow. All the bisons were fragmented same manner. The archeozoologic study of the site made it possible to understand that the men returned each year there, during generations. They arrived at the autumn or at the beginning of the winter, some animals consumed - a bisonne and its small, one or two males - then set out again. These men did not nourish a bison all the year. We are unaware of from where they came and where they went then, but we know that they knew sufficiently well the territory around Mauran to get the flint little which they needed. The quarzite and the other rocks were in the Garonne, which runs at the bottom of layer.  

The layer of Champlost
In the layer of Champlost, located in the north of Burgundy, the men also came each year, leaving a tablecloth of vestiges. They came to consume the horse, the bison and the reindeer; the study of industry, in progress in the years 1990, watch that it is about micoquien, which one rather finds in Bavaria that in France; however, several recent studies show that it is present in the Paris basin like with Micoque, in the Dordogne. This industry is abundant, the tools, of the scrapers simple, double, with double-side final improvement, are numerous, as well as nuclei at the improved edges resembling the small double-side ones. The layer, which extends on more than 1000 m2, shows that the men, which lived by small groups, reconsidered many times the same place, perhaps during several generations. For this layer, the raw material is close, but its occupants saved it as if they in did not have much. Perhaps they came from regions southernmost, where the raw material is not very abundant.

The facies moustériens

Although it is discussed, the role of the raw material in the morphology of the tools and the distinction of the various facies moustériens is appreciated better.  

Description
These various facies, described in France by François Border, are five: the typical moustérien, which was defined according to industries of Moustier; the moustérien of the Quina type, definite according to industries of Quina (in Charente); industries of the Ferrassie type, which understand an important Levallois component; the moustérien with dentils. Apart from France, one finds these same industries, with many alternatives according to the areas. In Italy, in the area of Rome, there exists an industry on small rollers which one calls the pontinien, undoubtedly because the flint rollers, on the littoral pontin (Anzio, caves of the Circé mount), are very young. In Germany, the micoquien is a current industry; it, at the beginning, is made on flint plates, then it uses little by little Levallois cutting up.  

Attempts at explanation
These facies are used as reference for whole Europe, but their identification is not the only goal: one tries to understand their significance. Between the purely functional explanation and the cultural explanation, there is place for many methods; one cannot eliminate the chronological evolution within stable geographical entities. There can be moreover phenomena of convergence of forms and effects of mode which carry to believe that industries which resemble each other were worked by the same human group. Generally, one attends with a standardization and a regularization of the forms. One does not observe, during the paleolithic means, of evolution of the tools towards the paleolithic superior. The impression of homogeneity is reinforced by the preponderance of a kind of tool, the scraper.

Hunting

The developments in the technologies of hunting are not directly known for us: it is only to the paleolithic superior that weapons are identified like such. However, the vestiges of fauna discovered in the layers show us that, for a good portion, the food of the men was flesh-colored. This “waste of kitchen” does not say to us how the animals were driven out, but they assure us that they were it. Hunting with a particular game seems to prevail as of the paleolithic means. This possibility of systematic hunting is suggested by the recent excavations of caves (Hortus, the Lazaret), by campings of outdoor where fauna is preserved (Puycelci), like by recent studies of fauna discovered in the past (Grenal Combe).

The men drove out the large herbivores preferably: deer tribe, bovids, horses. The occupied caves in an intermittent way reveal a choice more varied, which made a long time say that the Neanderthal hunters killed, to nourish itself, all that was presented. It is on the contrary possible that hunting for the large herbivores was the subject of the dialog of a group: one can imagine techniques which call upon the trick, the precaution and cohesion between the members of the group.

Burials

It is during the paleolithic recent means, at the beginning of the last glaciation, that the first burials appear. Even if they concern only some individuals within the human groups, they mark a change of the behavior, whereas industries do not let anything appear. Many myths flowered on the funerary rites at one time when the methods of excavation did not make it possible to check the assumptions. Many burials were discovered in France at the beginning of the XX E century, under bad conditions of excavation. The first burial put at the day is that of Vault-with-Saint, in Corrèze (1908). In 1909, several burials of adults and children Neanderthal were recognized with Ferrassie, then that of a teenager in Moustier. The many Neanderthal skeletons found in the caves prove the practice of the burial, but the documents we have do not make it possible to speak about rites or worships, even if nothing is opposed to their existence.  

The cannibalism was evoked, in particular to explain the state of the many discovered bones with Krapina, in Croatia; however, a anthropophagic practice remains indemonstrable even when traces of scratches seem to prove that an emaciation was practiced.