| ÉTAGE | STATION | |
| Tardenoisien, | Fère-en-Tardenois, Aisne. | |
| Azilien, | Mas d'Azil, Ariège. | |
| Magdalenien, | La Madeleine, près Tursac, Dordogne. | |
| Solutréen, | Solutré près Mâcon, Saône-et-Loire. | |
| Aurignacien, | Aurignac, Haute-Garonne. | |
| Moustérien, | Le Moustier, commune de Peyzac, Dordogne. | |
| Acheuléen, | St. Acheul, près Amiens, Somme. | |
| Chelléen, | Chelles-sur-Marne, Seine-et-Marne. | |
| Pre-Chelléen | ||
| (= Mesvinien, Rutot), Mesvin, Mons, Belgique. | ||
These stages, at first regarded as single, have each been subdivided into three or more substages, as a result of the more refined appreciation of the subtle advances in Palæolithic invention and technique.
![[Larger Image]](#6497371476237070465_fig005.jpg.id-3671558676215897379.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
Fig. 5. The type stations of the successive stages of Palæolithic
culture from the Chellean to the Azilian-Tardenoisian.
A new impulse to the study of Palæolithic culture was given in 1895, when E. Rivière discovered examples of Palæolithic mural art in the cavern of La Mouthe,[(33)] thus confirming the original discovery, in 1880, by Marcelino de Sautuola of the wonderful ceiling frescoes of the cave of Altamira, northern Spain.[(34)] This created the opportunity for the establishment by the Prince of Monaco of the Institut de Paléontologie humaine in 1910, supporting the combined researches of the Upper Palæolithic culture and art of France and Spain, by Cartailhac, Capitan, Rivière, Boule, Breuil, and Obermaier, and marking a new epoch in the brilliant history of the archæology of France.
It remained for the prehistory of the borders of the Danube, Rhine, and Neckar to be brought into harmony with that of France, and this has been accomplished with extraordinary precision and fulness through the labors of R. R. Schmidt, begun in 1906, and brought together in his invaluable work, Die diluviale Vorzeit Deutschlands.[(35)]
To an earlier and longer epoch belongs the Prepalæolithic or Eolithic stage. Beginning in 1867 with the supposed discovery by l'Abbé Bourgeois[(36)] of a primordial or Prepalæolithic stone culture, much observation and speculation has been devoted to the Eolithic[(37)] era and the Eolithic industry, culminating in the complete chronological system of Rutot, as follows:
LOWER QUATERNARY, OR PLEISTOCENE