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TERRA AMATA
Between past and present, between fiction and reality, it is our beloved land It lays on the west slope of Mount Boron between boulevard Carnot and Corniche André de Joly, between the Harbour and the “Castel des Deux Rois” park. The name was supposedly given to the place by some English people who settled there on their way back from India, discovering a landscape that would console them of their “Paradise Lost”. “Terra Amata” is the title of JMG Le Clézio’s fourth novel published in 1967. Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, a contemporary writer, was born in Nice.
Chancelade, the main character of his novel, lives in Terra Amata which is mentioned by the author as follows: “You cannot escape this country… You never leave it. It is beauty.” (1) It is also a complex including a nursery, a preschool and a primary school, a community centre, the CEDAC, a public library and an archaeological museum, the “Terra Amata Museum”. The story of the museum starts back in 1966 when a building site started excavating the slope in view of erecting a block of flats and thus uncovered archaeological remains.
The scientists were given six months to assess the interest of the site and to conduct the necessary salvage excavations. Henry de Lumley was in charge of the operation. In order to preserve the abundant finds uncovered, the Town Hall authorities of the time, decided to create a museum on the site itself. The Terra Amata Museum opened ten years later in 1976. Soon it appeared that Terra Amata had been an open air site on the beach, lying today at the altitude of 26m above modern sea level. It revealed a high concentration of artefacts attributed to Acheulan culture, large mammal bone remains and evidence of structure: fire structure, huts, etc…
Some researchers, like Henry de Lumley, concluded that the site contained a series of superimposed living floors and interpreted the arrangements of stones at the site as the foundations of huts or windbreaks. This interpretation would make them some of the earliest examples of human habitation ever found. Other archaeologists, like Paola Villa disputed this hypothesis.
So the experts’ debate is still going on. Anyway, the French Riviera is a major prehistoric site. It was inhabited by man several million years B.C. as shown in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin grottoes by traces of human activity. Around 400 000 years ago, the first homes were supposedly built around the Terra Amata beaches, and 200 000 years BC the Lazaret Cave (between La Réserve” and Coco Beach) was inhabited by hunters. 80000 years ago Neanderthal man occupied the surrounding grottoes.
Weapons dating from 30 000 years BC have been found proving that Homo sapiens sapiens lived in this area. The Terra Amata Museum of Human Palaeontology presents the cast of the original beach showing a footprint of a hominid of about 1.55m, original fire circles, animal bone remains and tools. Some coprolites(fossilized excrements) have been found but cannot be attributed to men, and no human remains have been discovered.
Various elements have enabled the scientists to visualize the type of habitat used by our local ancestors and to build a hut made of branches such as it was done by the Homo erectus that lived here. The site has yielded a large amount of flint tools giving evidence of an industry of choppers, scrapers and other cutting tools being made on the site. The museum organizes theme exhibitions such as the current one “The Fire Conquest” and lectures. It receives groups of children who work on school projects. It is open to the public except on Mondays. It is located at 25 Boulevard Carnot 06300 Nice, 04 93 55 59 93.
