Space 5 - He had a good life in Terra Amata

At the time of Terra Amata, the climate is generally tempered, as evidenced by the presence of the boar but also the deer or daim. A Mediterranean influence is emphasized by some trees, such as the olive grove or green oak and some animals, such as Hermann’s turtle, which is still present in the Var.

400,000 years ago, at the time of the beach, the climate was slightly warmer than today. Then, 340,000 years ago, at the time of the dune, it had become slightly cooler.

Elephants in Nice?

From their hunting hikes, Terra Amata men sometimes reported elephants. They preferred elephants, easier to kill and lighter to carry. Sometimes they attacked elephants who were already dead, stumbled into the marshes.

Ancient elephants lived in a mild and humid climate, preferably close to forests and water points. Their abundance in Terra Amata is due to the presence of shallow water in the Nice plain.

All of them hunting deer!

Terra Amata's men were great deer hunters. Indeed, this animal is, with the elephant, one of the most abundant species among the animals found on this site. Similar to the present elaphant deer, it shows a temperate climate and the presence of large forests.

The men chased, in these forests, around the site, the adult deer, in the strength of the age, that they carried whole on their camp, before cutting them and eating them. They could also use their skin to get dressed, but we don’t have a trace...

The dangerous hunting of the aurochs

The men of Terra Amata seem to have chased aurochs in the open spaces of the Nice plain. The presence of aurochs indicates a rather mild climate.

He was a powerful and dangerous animal. He weighed up to one ton and often measured more than two meters high. His horns, curved forward, measured 80 centimetres long. This ancestor of current cows and bulls appeared in Europe, around 7001,000 years before Jesus Christ. He was still alive recently. Indeed, the last auroch died in Poland in 1627.