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Villages / Jura / Franches-Montagnes district / Grottes de Saint-Brais

Grottes de Saint-Brais

Site Canton of Jura · District: Franches-Montagnes · Uninhabited site (municipalities of Saint-Brais and Haute-Sorne)
Part of the municipality of Saint-Brais
Origin of the name Founding Historical timeline Must-see historical sites Remains Sources and references Nearby villages

Origin of the name Grottes de Saint-Brais

The site bears the name of the village of Saint-Brais, east of which the three caves open. The excavators numbered them I, II and III. Cave II is also called « Creux Koby », after its excavator Frédéric-Edouard Koby.[2][4]

Founding of Grottes de Saint-Brais

The three caves of Saint-Brais, hollowed out of the rock by seeping water, open at the foot of a cliff above the Restaurant de la Roche, east of the village of Saint-Brais, at 950 to 1'000 m above sea level, where the Franches-Montagnes plateau meets the western end of the Delémont valley. Caves I and II lie on the territory of Glovelier (municipality of Haute-Sorne), cave III on that of Saint-Brais. The shelters « Saint-Brais I and II » and « Le Mont / Saint-Brais III » are cultural property of national significance (federal PCP inventory). From the Palaeolithic to the Bronze Age they sheltered humans and animals, above all the cave bear. It is not known whether human groups followed one another by chance or whether the caves served as shelters on expeditions into the mountains from the Delémont valley. The ophthalmologist Frédéric-Edouard Koby explored them from 1935 into the 1960s.[1][2][3][5]

History of Grottes de Saint-Brais

Middle Palaeolithic. Mousterian hunters leave flakes and scrapers of flint, lydite, chert and quartzite in caves I and II.[2]

Around 40'000-35'000 BC. An upper left incisor of a Neanderthal is left in cave II.[1][2]

Around 10'000 BC. Worked flints (scrapers, points, blades) and bone tools from the end of the Ice Age in cave I. Traces of a hearth and Azilian flints in cave II.[1]

Neolithic. A hearth and a few pottery fragments point to an occupation of cave I.[1][2]

1450-1200 BC. The three caves serve as dwellings or shelters at the end of the Middle Bronze Age and the beginning of the Late Bronze Age: they have yielded abundant pottery.[1]

1935. Frédéric-Edouard Koby explores the caves with Albert Perrone (spelling uncertain) and Edmond Guéniat and discovers bones. His research continues into the 1960s.[1][2][4]

1938. Koby publishes « Une nouvelle station préhistorique : les cavernes de Saint-Brais ».[2][4]

1955. On 4 September Koby finds a Neanderthal incisor 2.9 m deep in cave II: the first Neanderthal human remain known in Switzerland.[1][2]

1956. Koby publishes the Neanderthal incisor in the Verhandlungen of the Basel natural science society.[2]

1967. P. Reusser excavates cave II.[2]

1970. An exhibition in Basel presents Koby's excavations in the Saint-Brais cave.[4]

1994. M. Schenardi publishes a study of the Bronze Age in the canton of Jura that includes the finds from the caves.[2]

2015. In April the gate protecting cave II is found forced, with buckets and tools: after illegal digging, the Archaeology and Palaeontology Section of the Office of Culture files a complaint and has the gate secured again.[2][3][4]

Historic sites in Grottes de Saint-Brais

Cave I. The largest of the three, facing south, with two entrances and an area reportedly of more than 200 m². Its walls are polished by the repeated rubbing of cave bears.[2]

Cave II. A chamber of about 8 by 10 m, reportedly linked by a passage to a shaft, closed by a protective gate. The Neanderthal incisor was found here.[2]

Cave III. A cave reportedly with two entrances, to the south and south-east, where Koby observed a Palaeolithic hearth. The cave-bear layer is absent here.[2]

Remains in Grottes de Saint-Brais

Neanderthal incisor. Upper left incisor of a Mousterian human, found in 1955 in a natural niche of cave II and dated to around 40'000 BC. Together with a maxilla from the Cotencher cave (Neuchâtel), it is one of the two oldest human remains in Switzerland.[1][2]

Ice Age fauna. More than 90 % of the bones belong to the cave bear. There are also cold-climate species (cave lion, chamois, marmot, ibex, snow vole, collared lemming) and a more recent fauna (horse, red deer, wild boar, fox). Radiocarbon dating of bear bones from cave II gives at least 30'000 BC.[1][2][3]

Bronze Age finds. Nearly 900 potsherds in cave I, some with excised decoration, a quern fragment, pebbles used as hammerstones and a fragment of a bronze bracelet, the only metal object. About twenty sherds from two pots in cave II and 124 sherds in cave III.[1][2]

Human remains from cave I. In an intermediate layer, skull fragments of a youth aged 15 to 18, perhaps the remains of a cremated body, together with two bone awls.[2]

Sources

  1. Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse, « Saint-Brais » (François Schifferdecker, François Kohler)
  2. Office de la culture du Jura, Section d'archéologie et paléontologie, « Les grottes de Glovelier et Saint-Brais »
  3. RFJ, « Sur les traces du passé : les grottes de St-Brais » (28 juillet 2026), document publié par la République et Canton du Jura
  4. Denis Moine, Chronologie jurassienne, « Saint-Brais »
  5. Office fédéral de la protection de la population (OFPP), Inventaire PBC, liste cantonale du canton du Jura (état au 1.1.2026)
  6. geo.admin.ch (swisstopo), recherche de lieux « St-Brais »

Other villages near Grottes de Saint-Brais

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