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Heritage classified

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Origin and history

Menchecourt's career, located on rue de Haut in Abbeville (Somme, Hauts-de-France), is a major prehistoric site of the lower Paleolithic. Ranked a historical monument in 1983, it is located on an alluvial terrace of the Somme, where excavations revealed bones of prehistoric animals and flint carved from the 19th century. These discoveries played a key role in recognizing the existence of prehistoric man.

In 1844, Jacques Boucher de Perthes identified flint tools associated with mammoth and dwarf rhinoceros bones from Pleistocene (between -2.5 million and -10,000 years). His work, published between 1846 and 1864 (notably Celtic and anti-Adhiluvian Antiquities), demonstrated the superposition of two lithic industries, questioning the then dominant biblical chronology. The ancient stratum, with its cut flints, proved a human occupation well ahead of the estimates of the time.

The site illustrates a major technological transition: the upper stratum contained polished stones, while the lower stratum, older, housed contemporary flint cut from extinct fauna. These excavations marked a turning point in the study of prehistory, by scientifically validating the idea of a much older humanity than religious texts suggested. Boucher de Perthes also established a methodology for dating by geological layers, the founder of modern archaeology.

Today, Menchecourt's career remains an exceptional testimony of the first traces of human occupation in North-West Europe. Its classification as a historical monument underscores its importance for understanding the origins of humanity and stone-cutting techniques in the Paleolithic. The bones of large mammals (mammouths, rhinoceros) discovered on site confirm a glacial environment and an extinct fauna.

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