KEY POINTS:
Paris has long been known to be a very old city but its history as a settlement has just been extended by more than 3000 years.
An archaeological dig, whose findings were revealed yesterday, moves back Paris's first known human occupation to about 7600BC, in the Mesolithic period
between the two stone ages.
An area about the size of a football field on the south-western edge of the city, close to the banks of the river Seine, has yielded thousands of flint arrowheads and fragments of animal bone.
The site, between the Paris ring road and the city's helicopter port, is believed by archaeologists to have been used, nearly 10,000 years ago, as a kind of sorting and finishing station for flint pebbles washed up on the banks of the river. Once the dig is complete, the site will be occupied by a plant for sorting and recycling refuse.
"You could say that we've come full circle," said Benedicte Souffi, one of the two archaeologists in charge of the site.
"Our ancestors were sorting rubbish from usable objects here in 7600BC. We are going to be doing much the same thing on a more elaborate scale. Maybe, there is a lesson there."
The oldest previous human settlement discovered within the Paris city boundaries dates back to about 4500BC - a fishing and hunting village beside the Seine at Bercy near the Gare de Lyon railway station.
The new exploration - by Inrap, the French government agency for "preventive" archaeology on sites where new building is imminent - pushes back the history of the city to the mysterious period between the Old and New stone ages.
During the Mesolithic period, the "big game" of the Paleolithic, such as mammoth and reindeer, had disappeared from Western Europe. The scattered human bands were still hunter-gatherers, and not farmers, but they lived in temperate forests and hunted with bows and arrows rather than spears.
The site, about a kilometre from the Eiffel Tower, has been preserved by silt from the frequent flooding of the Seine.
Archaeologists believe it was used for many centuries during the Mesolithic period, perhaps for only a few weeks at a time, as a place to prospect for flint pebbles for cutting into arrowheads.
The dig has also unearthed larger instruments made from granite. They include an almost perfectly round hand-held pounder the size of a billiard ball, and long stone blades, possibly used for making arrow shafts or scraping animal skins.
Evidence suggests it remained in use as a settlement, on and off, until the iron age, from 800 to 500BC. Julius Caesar reported that the site of the capital was occupied by a Gaulish tribe called the Parisii in 53BC.
The Roman city of Lutece was established soon afterwards, beginning in what is now the fifth arrondissement, on the left bank of the Seine.
- INDEPENDENT