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Mask of la Roche-Cotard

1975 archaeological discoveriesArchaeological artifactsArchaeological discoveries in FranceIndre-et-LoireMasks in Europe
MousterianNeanderthalsPrehistoric art in France
La Roche Cotard
La Roche Cotard

The Mask of la Roche-Cotard, also known as the "Mousterian Protofigurine", is an artifact dated to around 75,000 years ago, in the Mousterian period. It was found in 1975 in the entrance of a cave named La Roche-Cotard, territory of the commune of Langeais (Indre-et-Loire), on the banks of the river Loire. The artifact, possibly created by Neanderthal humans, is a piece of flat flint that has been shaped in a way that seems to resemble the upper part of a face. A piece of bone pushed through a hole in the stone has been interpreted as a representation of eyes. Paul Bahn has suggested this "mask" is "highly inconvenient", as "It makes a nonsense of the view that clueless Neanderthals could only copy their cultural superiors the Cro-Magnons". Though this may represent an example of artistic expression in Neanderthal humans, some archaeologists question whether the artifact represents a face, and some suggest that it may be practical rather than artistic. In 2023 the oldest known Neanderthal engravings were found in La Roche-Cotard cave which have been dated to more than 57,000 years ago.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Mask of la Roche-Cotard (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Mask of la Roche-Cotard
Chinon

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N 47.336666666667 ° E 0.42611111111111 °
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37130 Chinon (Langeais)
Centre-Val de Loire, France
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La Roche Cotard
La Roche Cotard
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Musée Maurice Dufresne
Musée Maurice Dufresne

The Museum of Maurice Dufresne (in French: Musée Maurice-Dufresne) is a technological history museum located in the mill at Marnay, near the Château of Azay-le-Rideau, France. It has acquired numerous important objects displayed in vast buildings containing some 25 rooms. The museum pieces are presented thematically: agricultural machines, silk and textile industries, musketry, hydraulic power, etc. Born in 1930, Maurice Dufresne began his training as a blacksmith at the age of fourteen and joined the "Compagnons du Devoir", an organization of journeymen -craftsmen, to begin a tour of France, working for twenty different employers. In 1958, he created his own company in Villeperdue in the region Indre-et-Loire. He started out in the salvage business and began saving things which he thought worthy of placing later in his museum, thereby avoiding the destruction of part of the French heritage. Thirty years later, on 24 October 1992, the prefect, the notables of the region and the press inaugurated the Museum Maurice Dufresne in Marnay near Azay-le-Rideau, on the banks of the Indre river in an old mill on a site owned by Geoffroy de l'Ile in 1026, which later became a paper factory in the time of Balzac. The scrap dealer from Villeperdue, armed only with his enthusiasm, was able to create this amazing museum of collections of machines from a road roller to a hearse, from a copper sulfate sprayer to a Louis Blériot monoplane, and to present all of this in enjoyable surroundings. His museum today presents more than 3,000 machines in warehouses covering 10,000 m2. It has already attracted 600,000 visitors and 23 guestbooks are filled with comments from around the world. In the last few years, Maurice Dufresne has continually travelled between Marnay and Villeperdue, where 27 people run the medium-sized salvage business.