Annette Laming-Emperaire

[1] After the war, she studied archaeology and specialized in cave art, her doctoral thesis, done under the supervision of André Leroi-Gourhan, La Signification de l'art rupestre paléolithique (published in 1962),dismissed the various, too creative theories of its predecessors, and, with them, any residual nineteenth-century prejudice or romance about the "primitive" mind.

It involves compiling minutely detailed inventories and diagrams of the way that species are grouped on the cave walls; of their gender, frequency, and position; and of their relation to the signs and handprints that often appear close to them.

The Franco-Brazilian mission in Lagoa Santa, under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), remained in the region between 1974 and 1976 and concentrated the excavations mainly in the Lapa Vermelha de Pedro Leopoldo.

When surveying collections of fossils in the museum, anthropologist Walter Neves, from the University of São Paulo (USP), made in-depth studies on the bones and provided the dating, which is 11,400 years.

One of the great merits of the Franco-Brazilian mission, according to experts, was to rescue in the world scientific scenario the importance of Lagoa Santa, where Dr. Lund, in more than four decades, collected more than 12 thousand fossils, which were sent in 1845, to the King of Denmark.