[1] It specifically lists 15 prehistoric sites in the Vézère valley in the Dordogne department, mostly in and around Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil, which has been called the "Capital of Prehistory".

In particular the occupation sites of a short stretch of the Vézère valley in the Dordogne département have revealed a series of superimposed culture strata sometimes totalling many feet thick, which have enabled a sequence of culture types to be established.The same book then lists 7 masterpieces of prehistoric art, including Lascaux, Les Combarelles and Font de Gaume.

Excavations in the Dordogne region started in 1810, but only in 1863 were the first scientific researches made by the paleontologist Edouard Lartet together with the Englishman Henry Christy; in a period of five months they visited numerous sites in Les Eyzies, including the Grotte Richard, some shelters in the Gorge d'Enfer, Laugerie Basse, Laugerie Haute, La Madeleine and Le Moustier.

[20] Lartet previously already had excavated the Cave of Aurignac, which gave its name to the Aurignacian, and had published his finds of a few of the earliest decorated objects from the Upper Paleolithicum.

[2] In 1864 they found at La Madeleine an engraving on ivory, showing a mammoth: this was the first definitive piece of evidence that the inhabitants of these rock shelters had lived at the same time as some long-extinct animals.

[20] At the start of the 20th century, the excavations in the Vézère valley multiply, with two major effects: the authenticity of rock art is finally established, and a full chronology of the technological cultures in prehistoric Western Europe is developed.

His conclusion that some of the engravings had been covered by stalagmites, thereby showing their great age, was one of the main arguments to get the reality of prehistoric rock art finally accepted.

In 1902, Émile Cartailhac, the main critic of the notion that Paleolithic humans would have been capable of producing such art, upon seeing the reports about the two caves and La Mouthe, became convinced that the believers had been right all along.