In the footsteps of the man from Arago on France 5

Inert bodies and human limbs pile up in Élisabeth Daynès' bright studio. A somewhat macabre accumulation. Not enough to make a necromancer happy, however: none of this lived. Clay, plaster, glass… Here we are in the lair of a paleo-art sculptor. Surrounded by shelves where rows of fake skulls and vials of paint are carefully arranged, the artist models a hyper-realistic face. It's not quite a portrait of a human. Thick eyebrow arch, non-existent forehead, coarser features, no cheekbones. It is a reconstruction of Tautavel Man. Other details, the hair, the copper skin and the hazel eyes, are left to the appreciation of the artist.

Not easy, in fact, to give body to this prehistoric man, who died 450,000 years ago at the bottom of the Arago cave, at the foot of the Pyrénées-Orientales. However, this is what Emma Baus' fabulous documentary aims to do, winning an award at the Objectif Préhistoire festival as well as at the Narbonnaise Archaeological Meetings. Following in the footsteps of paleo-anthropologist Amélie Vialet, the film questions the identity, practices and phylogenetic affiliation of the individual discovered in 1971 in a cave in the town of Tautavel, near Perpignan.

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History of humanity: from the depths of the Tautavel cave, 700 millennia gaze upon us

A complete picture

When it was unearthed more than fifty years ago, the specimen was the oldest prehistoric man discovered on the European continent. Since then, this title has been snatched from him several times. No matter, science – which has come a long way – now suggests that Tautavel Man belongs to the genus A man from Heidelbergan ancestor of the Neanderthals. And that the individual was not necessarily male, which other reconstructions – virtual this time – help to illustrate. Punctuated with incursions on other archaeological sites, from Spain to Germany, Emma Baus' documentary paints a complete portrait of this distant cousin, detailing his appetite for reindeer and mouflon skins, his nomadic robustness , its relationship to the environment and even… its anthropophagic inclinations. A delicious program.