Скачать или смотреть Le Regourdou and its Brown Bears (an archaeological site in the Dordogne, France) - August 2017

Le Regourdou (or Le Régourdou) is an archaeological site in the Dordogne department, France, on top of a hill just 800 m (2,600 ft) from the famous cave complex of Lascaux. At this now collapsed 35 m (115 ft) deep ancient karst cavity remarkably well preserved Neanderthal fossils were recovered, that might be skeletal remains of deliberate burials.

The site of Regourdou was discovered by chance in 1954 by its owner, Roger Constant. He had seen water being swallowed through a hole into the ground of his farmyard and chose to enlarge it in the hope of discovering another entry to the nearby cave of Lascaux. This cave complex had been discovered in September 1940, after a storm had uprooted a tree that lay above the entrance, thereby causing the collapse of parts of its vault, opening the current artificial entrance. Constant, having noticed a similar collapse in front of his house, considered the event to be related to the Lascaux cave. He started to dig on his own without official approval, found numerous stone tools and on 22 September 1957, he excavated a Neanderthal mandible.

Renewed excavations in 2008 and 2011 lead to the discovery of many more fossils, like the pelvic remains of Le Regourdou.

Apart from a Neanderthal skeleton discovered in 1957, excavator Eugène Bonifay found a large number of brown bear bones, several pits and stone platforms that contained bear bones. These were interpreted as evidence of a Middle Palaeolithic bear cult. This interpretation, however, was seriously debated given that repeated occupation of the cave by bears followed natural taphonomic phenomena, that reasonably explain the large number of bones.

The first Neanderthal (Regourdou), found at the site is a young adult, that initially preserved the mandible, part of the upper limbs and the sternum. s of the hands and the posterior arch of the lumbar vertebra.

Regourdou is often used for Neanderthal comparison studies, as it is the most robust Neanderthal skeleton ever found.

The site is also home to some captive brown bears, once a common sight in this area.