The area of Europe now known as France has a facinating history going back many thousands of years. No holiday in France would be complete without exploring the places where european civilization probably first started.

Traces of human existence are rare in France until about 50,000 BC. Thereafter, beginning with the "Mousterian civilization", they become ever more numerous, with an especially heavy concentration of sites in the Périgord region of the Dordogne, where, near the village of Les Eyzies, remains were discovered of a late Stone Age people, subsequently dubbed "Cro-Magnon". Flourishing from around 25,000 BC, these cave-dwelling hunters seem to have developed quite a sophisticated culture, the evidence of which is preserved in the beautiful paintings and engravings on the walls of the region's caves.

The main base for visiting many of the prehistoric painted caves of the Vézère valley is LES EYZIES-DE-TAYAC , an unattractive one-street village completely dedicated to tourism. But while you're here, visit the Musée National de Préhistoire, which exhibits numerous prehistoric artefacts and copies of one of the most beautiful pieces of Stone Age art, two clay bison from the Tuc d'Audoubert cave in the Pyrenees. Look out, too, for the small bas-relief of an exaggerated female figure holding what looks like a slice of watermelon, found near Laussel, known as the Vénus à la Corne (Venus with the Horn of Plenty): the original is in the Musée d'Aquitaine in Bordeaux.

Destination Guides > Europe & Russia > Europe > France > Dordogne, Limousin and Lot > Dordogne > Périgord Noir and the upper Dordogne > Les Eyzies > Caves around Les Eyzies

No one ever lived in these caves, and there are various theories as to why such inaccessible spots were chosen. Most agree that the caves were sanctuaries and, if not actually places of worship, they at least had religious significance. One theory is that making images of animals that were commonly hunted - like reindeer and bison - or feared - like bears and mammoths - was a kind of sympathetic magic intended to help men either catch or evade these animals. Another is that they were part of a fertility cult: sexual images of women with pendulous breasts and protuberant rumps are common, and it seems, too, that certain animals were associated with the feminine principle. Others argue that these cave paintings served educational purposes, making parallels with Australian aborigines who used similar images to teach their young vital survival information as well as the history and mythological origins of their people. But much remains unexplained - for instance, the abstract signs that appear in many caves and the arrows which clearly cannot be arrows, because Stone Age arrowheads looked different from these representations

By 10,000 BC human communities had spread out widely across the whole of France. The ice cap receded, the climate became warmer and wetter, and by about 7000 BC farming and pastoral communities had begun to develop. By 4500 BC, the first dolmens (megalithic stone tombs) showed up in Brittany; around 2000 BC copper made its appearance; and by 1800 BC the Bronze Age had arrived in the east and southeast of the country, and trade links had begun with Spain, central Europe and Wessex in Britain.

Significant population shifts occurred, too, at this time. Around 1200 BC the Urnfield people , who buried their dead in sunken urns, began to make incursions from the east. By 900 BC, they had been joined by the Halstatt people who worked with iron and settled in Burgundy, Alsace and Franche-Comté near the principal ore deposits . At some point around 450 BC, the first Celts made an appearance in the region.

The sheer physical diversity of France would be hard to exhaust in a lifetime of visits. The landscapes range from the fretted coasts of Brittany to the limestone hills of Provence, the canyons of the Pyrenees and the half-moon bays of Corsica, from the lushly wooded valleys of the Dordogne to the glaciated peaks of the Alps. Each region looks and feels different, has its own style of architecture, its characteristic food and often its own patois or dialect. Though the French word pays is the term for a whole country, local people frequently refer to their own immediate vicinity as mon pays - my country - and to a person from another town as a foreigner. This strong sense of regional identity, often expressed in the form of active separatist movements, as in Brittany and Corsica, has persisted over centuries in the teeth of centralized administrative control from Paris.

Top Destinations

• Aix-en-Provence • Angers • Avignon • Dijon • Lille • Lyon

• Marseille • Nice • Paris • Strasbourg • Toulouse • Tours