At a time when the programs of groups of researchers are focusing on the study of stereotypes (The Other and Us) and representations of the Other through the history of "Human Zoos", we want to re-examine an important question for our discipline: why were the Mesolithic and its decorated artefacts denied in the modern era of Napoleon 3 and Jules Grévy. To understand why these aesthetics were not considered in the same way as the aesthetics of the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods in which it is embedded?
In the effervescent era of nascent anthropology, Europe claims, everything by discussing the evolutionism of C. Darwin, technical progress as a model of life to adopt. What influence do evolutionist, positivist, ethnocentric ideas have they had on the judgment issued on the Mesolithic and its aesthetic productions?