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Discovered in 1868 at Les Eyzies (Dordogne), Cro-Magnon man is today regarded as the epitome of both the physical and cultural “modernity” of the Homo sapiens species. Qualified since the 1950s as “Neanthropian,” in contrast to the archaic types that preceded him, he fulfils an essentially humanist role by encompassing all the present populations of the globe in a single positive ancestry.Nevertheless, the first analyses of the Cro-Magnon fossils held at the Paris Natural History Museum affirmed the “strangeness” of these cave men. For many observers, they illustrated the absolute otherness of a savage and violent “race” having no “modern” analogue, which, according to Paul Broca, perished abruptly without leaving any descendants. From one century to the next, this representation underwent a radical inversion, allowing us to reflect on the categories adopted in the years 1860–80. These choices evoked man’s antiquity and his supposedly progressive development, involving changing bodily forms as well as “civilization”—the latter being commonly envisaged as a dynamic concept associated with anatomical changes.