Les Eyzies (French pronunciation: [le.z‿ezi]; Occitan: Las Aisiás) is a commune in the Dordogne department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in southwestern France. It was established on 1 January 2019 by merger of the former communes of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil (the seat), Manaurie and Saint-Cirq. Les Eyzies station has rail connections to Périgueux and Agen.
Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil (French pronunciation: [le.z‿ezi də tajak siʁœj]; Occitan: Las Aisiás de Taiac e Siruèlh) is a former commune in the Dordogne department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in southwestern France. It was created in 1973 by the merger of two former communes: Les Eyzies-de-Tayac and Sireuil. On 1 January 2019, it was merged into the new commune Les Eyzies.
Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil lies in the Périgord Noir area. It is served by the Gare des Eyzies railway station. This locale is home to the Musée national de Préhistoire (National Museum of Prehistory) and the area contains several important archaeological sites, including the Font-de-Gaume, Grotte du Grand-Roc and Lascaux cave prehistoric rock dwellings. The many prehistoric sites and cave paintings in the area were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as Prehistoric Sites and Decorated Caves of the Vézère Valley in 1979.
Cro-Magnon (/kroʊˈmænjɒn/ kroh-MAN-yon or /kroʊˈmæɡnən/ kroh-MAG-nən; French: abri de Cro-Magnon [abʁi d(ə) kʁomaɲɔ̃]; Occitan: abric de Cròsmanhon) is an Aurignacian (Upper Paleolithic) site, located in a rock shelter in the commune of Les Eyzies, Dordogne, southwestern France.
Most notably, it is the site of the discovery of anatomically modern human remains, apparently buried at the site, dated to about 28,000 years ago. The find is also called Cro-Magnon after the name of the rock shelter. Because of its archeological importance, Abri de Cro-Magnon was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of the Prehistoric Sites and Decorated Caves of the Vézère Valley site.
Magdalenian cultures (also Madelenian; French: Magdalénien) are later cultures of the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic in western Europe. They date from around 17,000 to 12,000 years before present. It is named after the type site of Abri de la Madeleine, a rock shelter (abri) located in the Vézère valley of Tursac in Dordogne, France.
Édouard Lartet and Henry Christy originally termed the period L'âge du renne "the age of the reindeer". They conducted the first archaeological excavation of the type site, publishing in 1875. The Magdalenian is associated with reindeer hunters. Magdalenian sites contain extensive evidence for the hunting of red deer, wild horses, and other megafauna present in Europe toward the end of the Last Glacial Period. The culture was geographically widespread, and later Magdalenian sites stretched from Portugal in the west to Poland in the east, and as far north as France, the Channel Islands, England, and Wales. Besides la Madeleine, the chief stations of the Magdalenian are Les Eyzies, Laugerie-Basse, and Gorges d'Enfer in the Dordogne; Grotte du Placard in Charente and others in Southwest France.
Font-de-Gaume is a cave near Les Eyzies in the Dordogne department of south-west France. The cave contains prehistoric polychrome cave paintings and engravings dating to the Magdalenian period. Discovered in 1901, more than 200 images have been identified in Font-de-Gaume. Along with other nearby prehistoric archeological sites, Font-de-Gaume was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979 as the Prehistoric Sites and Decorated Caves of the Vézère Valley.