Cro Magnon is the name scientists once used to refer to what are now called Early Modern Humans or Anatomically Modern Humans -people who lived in western Europe at the end of the last ice age, around 40,000 to 10,000 years ago. They lived alongside Neanderthals for the first several thousand of those years. They were given the name Cro Magnon because, in 1868, parts of five skeletons were discovered in a rock shelter of that name in France.

Cro-Magnon was human society in its infancy, facing enormous environmental challenges from glaciers, predators, and a rival species of humans, the Neanderthals. Cro-Magnons had the adaptability that has made modern humans an unmatched success as a species. Living on a frozen continent with only crude tools, Ice Age humans survived and thrived. Indeed, these are one of our most remarkable ancestors. They survived by their wits, in a snowbound world, hunting, and sometimes being hunted by animals many times their size. By flickering firelight, they drew bison, deer, and mammoths on cavern walls- vibrant images that seize our imaginations after thirty thousand years.