40,000 Carvings in the Valley of Wonders

28,000-year-old double burial of a woman and adolescent adorned with shells traded from 200 kilometers away. Red ochre stained their bones, and their legs were bound - perhaps to prevent the dead from walking. Ice age funeral rites were complex.

A Neanderthal shelter showing evidence of windbreaks and sleeping arrangements - proving they had interior design concepts 150,000 years ago.

Deep-sea sediment cores drilled offshore contain tiny shells called foraminifera. The oxygen isotopes in these shells record water temperature when the creatures were alive. Scientists have read 5 million years of ice age cycles from the mud.

Where Karl von Frisch conducted the experiments that decoded bee communication - proving honeybees communicate direction and distance through the "waggle dance." His discovery earned a Nobel Prize and revealed an alien language in our backyards.

The world's perfume capital sits here because the local microclimate grows exceptional jasmine and roses. Modern gas chromatography revealed that Grasse jasmine contains over 200 volatile compounds. Perfumers have been chasing that complexity for 400 years.

Chunk of ancient oceanic crust thrust onto land. Geochemistry shows this rock formed at a mid-ocean ridge 150 million years ago, then pushed onto the continent during Alpine collision.