Solutrean

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Archaeological industry of the European Upper Paleolithic

title: "Solutrean" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["gravettian", "archaeological-cultures-of-europe", "archaeological-cultures-in-france", "archaeological-cultures-in-portugal", "archaeological-cultures-in-spain", "saône-et-loire", "upper-paleolithic-cultures-of-europe", "industries-(archaeology)"] description: "Archaeological industry of the European Upper Paleolithic" topic_path: "philosophy" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solutrean" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Archaeological industry of the European Upper Paleolithic ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox archaeological culture"]

Field	Value
name	Solutrean
map	Homo Sapiens in Europe - solutrean distribution map-en.svg
region	Western Europe
period	Upper Paleolithic
dates	c. 22,000 – c. 17,000 BP
typesite	Parc archéologique et botanique de Solutré
precededby	Gravettian
followedby	Magdalenian in France, and Iberia; in the latter after a transition through the
::

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The Solutrean industry is a relatively advanced flint tool-making style of the Upper Paleolithic of the Final Gravettian, from around 22,000 to 17,000 BP. Solutrean sites have been found in modern-day France, Spain and Portugal.

Details

The term Solutrean comes from the type-site of "Cros du Charnier", dating to around 21,000 years ago and located at Solutré, in east-central France near Mâcon. The Rock of Solutré site was discovered in 1866 by the French geologist and paleontologist Henry Testot-Ferry. It is now preserved as the Parc archéologique et botanique de Solutré.

The industry was named by Gabriel de Mortillet to describe the second stage of his system of cave chronology, following the Mousterian, and he considered it synchronous with the third division of the Quaternary period. The era's finds include tools, ornamental beads, and bone pins as well as prehistoric art, much like other earlier Uppers Paleolithic cultures, and "a number of sites contain pieces of mineral pigments - red and yellow ochre, black manganese - that could have been used for face or body painting." Portable art is rare, however. According to Doctor Michael Jochim at the University of California, Santa Barbara, evidence for burials is completely lacking, and evidence of ritual practices beyond artistic expressions seems to be uncommon.

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 flintknapping. Knapping was done using antler batons, hardwood batons and soft stone hammers. This method permitted the working of delicate slivers of flint to make light projectiles and even elaborate barbed and tanged arrowheads. Large thin spearheads; scrapers with edge not on the side but on the end; flint knives and saws, 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 transitional stage between the flint implements of the Mousterian and the bone implements of the Magdalenian epochs. Faunal finds include horses, reindeer, ibex, mammoths, cave lions, rhinoceroses, bears and aurochs. Solutrean finds have also been made in the caves of Les Eyzies and , and in the Lower Beds of Creswell Crags in Derbyshire, England (Proto-Solutrean). The industry first appeared in what is now Spain, and disappears from the archaeological record around 17,000 BP.

Physical characteristics

Examination of physical remains from the Solutrean period has determined that they were of a slightly more gracile type than the preceding Gravettian culture. Males were rather tall, with some skeletons being up to 179 cm tall. Volume 4 of the Portuguese Magazine of Archaeology from 2001 examined a Solutrean female individual whose physical remains are described as "having postcranial elements that derive from a relatively small and gracile individual". The teeth of Solutrean individuals are described as being similar in appearance to those belonging to the people of the Gravettian.

Genetics

Analysis of genomics of Solutrean-related individuals has found that they are unrelated to ancient or modern Native Americans and are instead related to earlier Western European Cro-Magnons, particularly earlier Gravettian-producing individuals from France and Spain, as well to the producers of the subsequent Magdalenian culture. It has been found that Solutreans are also closely related to Aurignacians.

Solutrean hypothesis in North American archaeology

Main article: Solutrean hypothesis

The Solutrean hypothesis argues that people from Europe may have been among the earliest settlers of the Americas.{{cite journal |title = The North Atlantic ice-edge corridor: a possible Paleolithic route to the New World
|first1 = Bruce |last1 = Bradley |author-link2 = Dennis Stanford |first2 = Dennis |last2 = Stanford |journal = World Archaeology |year = 2004 |volume = 36 |issue = 4 |pages = 459–478 |url = http://planet.uwc.ac.za/nisl/Conservation%20Biology/Karen%20PDF/Clovis/Bradley%20%26%20Stanford%202004.pdf |access-date = 1 March 2012 |doi = 10.1080/0043824042000303656 |citeseerx = 10.1.1.694.6801 |s2cid = 161534521 |archive-date = 20 March 2013 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130320033824/http://planet.uwc.ac.za/nisl/Conservation%20Biology/Karen%20PDF/Clovis/Bradley%20%26%20Stanford%202004.pdf |url-status = dead | last=Carey |first=Bjorn | date=19 February 2006 | url=http://www.livescience.com/history/060219_first_americans.html | title=First Americans may have been European | work=Live Science | access-date=1 March 2012 |newspaper=The Washington Post |title=Theory jolts familiar view of first Americans |date=1 March 2012 |pages=A1, A9 |access-date=1 March 2012 |first=Brian |last=Vastag |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/radical-theory-of-first-americans-places-stone-age-europeans-in-delmarva-20000-years-ago/2012/02/28/gIQA4mriiR_story.html |last=Straus |first=L.G. |title=Solutrean settlement of North America? A review of reality |journal=American Antiquity |date=April 2000|volume=65|issue=2|pages=219–226 |doi=10.2307/2694056|jstor=2694056 |s2cid=162349551 |author=Westley, Kieran and Justin Dix |title=The Solutrean Atlantic Hypothesis: A View from the Ocean |journal=Journal of the North Atlantic |year=2008 |volume=1 |pages=85–98 |doi=10.3721/J080527 |s2cid=130294767

In 2014, the autosomal DNA of a male infant (Anzick-1) from a 12,500-year-old deposit in Montana was sequenced. The skeleton was found in close association with several Clovis artifacts. Comparisons showed strong affinities with DNA from Siberian sites, and virtually ruled out any close affinity of Anzick-1 with European sources. The DNA of the Anzick-1 sample showed strong affinities with sampled Native American populations, which indicated that the samples derive from an ancient population that lived in or near Siberia, the Upper Paleolithic Mal'ta population.

Gallery

File:Solutrean tools 22000 17000 Crot du Charnier Solutre Pouilly Saone et Loire France.jpg|Solutrean tools, 22,000–17,000 BP, Crot du Charnier, Solutré-Pouilly, Saône-et-Loire, France File:Biface feuille de laurier.JPG|Flint point from Volgu in the National Archeological Museum in France File:Abris sous roches du Solutréen.JPG|Solutrean caves in Aujac, Gard File:Altamira-8.jpg|Solutrean cave art at Altamira

References

{{EB1911
European Prehistory: A Survey. Chapter 5, pages 96-97. Edited by Sarunas Milisauskas and written by Michael Jochim.
Ibid.
Yravedra, José. (15 May 2016). "Not so deserted…paleoecology and human subsistence in Central Iberia (Guadalajara, Spain) around the Last Glacial Maximum". [[Quaternary Science Reviews]].
White, Randall. (January 2008). "The Archaeology of Solvieux: An Upper Palaeolithic Open Air Site in France". American Anthropologist.
(2001). "Encyclopedia of Prehistory: Volume 4: Europe". Springer US.
(2009). "A preliminary description of Solutrean occupations in El Mirón cave (Ramales de la Victoria, Cantabria)".
Trinkaus, Erik. (July 2001). "Upper Paleolithic human remains from the Gruta do Caldeirão, Tomar, Portugal". Portuguese Magazine of Archaeology.
Heinrich, Hartmut. (1 March 1988). "Origin and consequences of cyclic ice rafting in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean during the past 130,000 years". Quaternary Research.
(2 March 2023). "Palaeogenomics of Upper Palaeolithic to Neolithic European hunter-gatherers". Nature.
Villalba-Mouco, Vanessa. (1 March 2023). "A 23,000-year-old southern Iberian individual links human groups that lived in Western Europe before and after the Last Glacial Maximum". Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Mann, Charles C. (Nov 2013), "The Clovis Point and the Discovery of America's First Culture," ''Smithsonian Magazine'', [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-clovis-point-and-the-discovery-of-americas-first-culture-3825828/]
(2014). "The genome of a Late Pleistocene human from a Clovis burial site in western Montana". Nature.
(14 February 2014). "Ancient American's genome mapped". BBC News.

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