MATERIAL AND METHODS
Material
The mandible of the ‘old man’ of Cro-Magnon was
made available byProf. M. Sakka of the Muse´e
1’Homme (Paris).
The ‘old man’ of Cro-Magnon was discovered in
1868 in the village of Les Eyzies, in the Dordogne
(France). The skull and the mandible were in a shelter
within a cliff along the river Ve´ze`re. He was
discovered in a sepulcure with four other subjects:
two other men, one woman and a child. Theylived
during the upper Palaeolithic age, at about 22 000 BC
(Vallois, 1968).
The features of these fossils led scientists to define
the oldest race of Homo sapiens sapiens: the CroMagnoid
race.
The ‘old man’ of Cro-Magnon is usuallyidentified
as Cro-Magnon I. His mandible is that of a Homo
sapiens sapiens, a male whose age is estimated at 50
years (Piveteau, 1957).