A museum to preserve traces of humanity

Since 1902, Monaco’s Museum of Prehistoric Anthropology has preserved and showcased human heritage.

The Museum of Prehistoric Anthropology was founded in 1902 by Prince Albert I. With a passion for the origins of Man, the “Scholar Prince”, who also established the Institute of Palaeontology in Paris in 1910, wanted to “conserve traces of early humankind exhumed in the Principality and neighbouring regions.” Prince Albert I had commissioned and funded a dig in the Grimaldi caves (1895–1902) and wanted to bring the archaeological heritage which had been collected together in a single location.

Visitors to the museum can discover a Siberian woolly mammoth dating back 31,000 years. Over the course of several expeditions (from 1991 to 2003), numerous fragments of the animal’s skeletal remains were collected from the Siberian permafrost and have now been affixed to a metal structure. The resulting reconstruction of a mammoth is impressive, at 5 metres long, 2.20 metres wide and 3.30 metres tall at its highest.

Having been temporarily exhibited in Japan and the United States, this remarkable specimen has been kept in Monaco since 2013 to allow scientific work (palaeontology, dating) to be carried out.