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- Some millenniums ago the site of the calanques between Niolon and Cassis looked over a wide plateau.

- Indeed, during ice age, the sea level was a hundred meters under today’s zero.

- Mammoths crossed the Channel, a wide meadow, such as the Lion Gulf where men hunted deers.

- In the caves of the calanques of Cassis now submersed we can find traces of prehistorical housings.

- The submarine archeological section of the Ministery of Culture and Communication has been ranking for about ten years the topography of those prehistorical people.

- The archeonaut armed by the Navy and attached to Toulon Harbor, used as a logistic device for every submarine archeological operation.

- That is the only boat of that type in Europe.

- During this 6 week-long campaign that is coming to an end, it allowed the exploration of 15 submarine caves mostly inhabited 10,000 years ago.

- We found shaped flint tools,

- bones of animals hunted by men, elephants, wild horses, stags, in fact much older that date back to about 150,000 years before our era.

- During ice ages, through retention of waterways the sea level went lowered and we know that it lowered of at least 120 meters under today’s level zero

- and during mild periods the sea level rose.

- And during those peri ice ages the climate in Provence was a bit like that of the peri ice steppe, of the Siberian tundra, for instance,

- with herds of deers, wild horses, that men hunted for example in the Durance Valley.

- In 2 caves of the Cassis region, we started major works and on the long term thanks to a sucker, pneumatic drills,

- in order to get samples of breeches, concretion, in which we can find shaped flints and bones.

- And also shells, that can allow a more accurate dating with the method of radiocarbon dating of those remains.

- We started to study the submarine caves in correlation with the study of the changes of the sea level.

- For what purpose?

- First it helps bettering our knowledge from the point of view of prehistorical populating of the South of France.

- Did you know that it is in Provence that the oldest traces of human settlement were found, on the French ground?

- In the Alpes Maritimes region and also and Aix region, in the cave of the Escale in Saint Estève Janson,

- and for an unknown reason there was a void on the prehistorical map along the shore.

- And in fact, we are filling this void, by the discovery of prehistorical housing, under the sea level, under today’s zero.