Nous trainons beaucoup d'idees recues sur la prehistoire de notre pays. Pourtant, depuis un siecle et demi, de Lucy a l'ADN, les decouvertes ont bouleverse l'idee que l'on se faisait des temps anciens. Faire revivre la prehistoire ? Pas si facile... Il va falloir etre clair et se garder de fantasmer : tout ce que les prehistoriens ont trouve est deja tres extraordinaire. Voici un ouvrage ne s'appuyant que sur des faits reels. Pres de 3 millions d'annees nous separent des premiers humains, les Homo habilis. Puis viennent les Homo erectus. Ils vivent de la chasse et de ce que la nature leur donne. Ils domestiquent le feu. Ils evoluent, physiquement et intellectuellement. Les Hommes de Neandertal perfectionnent leurs outils et leurs techniques de chasse. Ils enterrent leurs morts. Depuis environ 100 000 ans, les Homo sapiens, les Cro-Magnons, sont semblables a nous. Ils continuent a vivre de la chasse et de la cueillette, mais avec un mode de vie bien plus raffine. Ils peuplent toute la terre. C'est a eux que l'on doit, il y a environ 35 000 ans, l'art des cavernes qui temoigne de leur spiritualite.

Rock art dating has been one of the major challenges since its discovery and recognition. The methods have evolved through the last century, beginning with the study of superpositions and style until to the application of numeric methods since the 1990s. The aim of this paper is to evaluate and publish an up-to-date database of all of the numerical dates currently available for Iberian prehistoric rock art sites. For this purpose, the manuscript reviews all the methods applied so far to Iberian rock art discussing the limits, the sampling involved, and the problems affecting the results. After that, we present and discuss the most relevant results related to each cultural graphic tradition (Palaeolithic, Levantine, Schematic and Megalithic rock art) assessing their value and limitations. Finally, we reflect on the future of rock art dating: unfortunately most of the motifs are not dateble in numeric terms, meaning we still have to combine traditional with numerical methods; but also, we need to keep working on the problems affecting these methods to be able to create a more reliable chronological framework of use to address other issues such as group mobility, cultural networks, and reutilisation of symbolic elements, to name a few.

espanolLos autores exponen las dificultades por las que hubo de pasar la respuesta a un ar-ticulo, publicado en Science en 2018, en el que se afirmaba que el Neandertal era el autor de ciertas pinturas de tres cuevas espanolas, segun dataciones obtenidas por el metodo del uranio-torio. En esa respuesta, se explicitaban las distintas fuentes de error que pue-den conducir a fechas anormalmente envejecidas y se recapitulaban los argumentos ar-queologicos que contradicen dataciones tan antiguas. Muchos de los evaluadores de las revistas americanas prefirieron confiar en la arqueometria mas que en la Arqueologia europea, para ellos desconocida. Asi, el articulo circulo por las manos de numerosos re-visores, transcurriendo un ano y medio antes de que pudiera, por fin, salir en el Journal of Human Evolution. Este proceso ilustra la opacidad que subyace tras la aparente obje-tividad y neutralidad del procedimiento de evaluacion cientifica de revision por pares cuando se trata de contradecir a cientificos de reconocido prestigio. EnglishAn international group of archaeologists specializing in cave art explain the diffi-culties they faced to publish their response to another paper, previously published in Science (Hoffmann et al. 2018), reporting a Neanderthal origin of some Spanish cave pain-tings according to Uranium-thorium method. In their reply, they underlined the diffe-rent sources of error that lead to overestimate the dates and summarized the contra-dictions with archeological arguments. Some American reviewers put more trust in ar-cheometry than in European arqueology, which is unfamiliar to them. Thus, the paper passed through the hands of many reviewers and it took more than one year to finally publish it in Journal of Human Evolution. This whole process illustrates the lack of trans-parency in peer review procedures -although apparently objective and neutral- when renowned authors are concerned.

Lascaux is the most famous cave in the world. Early in the Magdalenian Era 17,000 years ago, prehistoric man chose it as a sanctuary. It was decorated with pictures of wild oxen, horses, bison, stags, mountain goats and a multitude of puzzling geometric signs, creating a breathtaking decor. By incredibly good fortune, most of the paintings and engravings survived intact until they were discovered on 12 September 1940. The photographs of the walls of the original cave included in this book were taken by Ray Delvert before the damage observed over the last few decades.“Like Brigitte Delluc, Gilles Delluc has become a foremost prehistory expert, with extensive knowledge of the lifestyle and art of Cro-Magnon Man.” (Prof. Henryde Lumley)“Gilles and Brigitte Delluc deserve to have their names engraved or painted beside the works that they study. They have undertaken a vast amount of work.” (Prof. Yves Coppens)

The caves of Perigord, decorated during the upper Paleolithic period, supplied more than a hundred human representations, often underestimated for the benefit of the rich group of animal figures: some are complete, realistic or simplistic, the others are fragmentary (sexes, male and feminine, heads and hands). They occupy gladly remarkable positions and are frequently regrouped among them. The simplistic feminine figures are numerous and they appear as well in panels consisted of animals as in groups specifically consisted of human representations. Male representations are characterized by the fact that they are represented in a single copy in every site and that they occupy there an important position, to the centre or to the bottom. These images could allow to make an idea of the artists who represented them. (C) 2009 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.