IN PICTURES: 12,000-year-old giant woolly mammoth skeleton to go on sale in France

The 12,000 year-old perfectly preserved skeleton of a giant woolly mammoth is to go on auction in the French city of Lyon in December.

Published: 17 November 2017 16:44 CET

IN PICTURES: 12,000-year-old giant woolly mammoth skeleton to go on sale in France

The skeleton is the largest of its kind still in the hands of a private owner.

At auction on December 16th it is expected to go for between €450,000 and €490,000 because of its “exceptional quality,” explained natural history expert Eric Mickeler.

Woolly mammoths were the “largest land mammals of all time,” he added.

“There are a hundred mammoths of this species around the world but this male is unique in size and the quality of its tusks, each weighing 80 kilos and 90 percent intact,” he added.

Here it is in pictures:

All photos: AFP

France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

More than 200,000 Algerians fought with the French army in the war that pitted Algerian independence fighters against their French colonial masters from 1954 to 1962.

At the end of the war, the French government left the loyalist fighters known as Harkis to fend for themselves, despite earlier promises it would look after them.

Trapped in Algeria, many were massacred as the new authorities took revenge.

Thousands of others who fled to France were held in camps, often with their families, in deplorable conditions that an AFP investigation recently found led to the deaths of dozens of children, most of them babies.

French President Emmanuel Macron in 2021 asked for “forgiveness” on behalf of his country for abandoning the Harkis and their families after independence.

The following year, a law was passed to recognise the state’s responsibility for the “indignity of the hosting and living conditions on its territory”, which caused “exclusion, suffering and lasting trauma”, and recognised the right to reparations for those who had lived in 89 of the internment camps.

But following a new report, 45 new sites – including military camps, slums and shacks – were added on Monday to that list of places the Harkis and their relatives were forced to live, the government said.

Now “up to 14,000 (more) people could receive compensation after transiting through one of these structures,” it said, signalling possible reparations for both the Harkis and their descendants.

Secretary of state Patricia Miralles said the decision hoped to “make amends for a new injustice, including in regions where until now the prejudices suffered by the Harkis living there were not recognised”.

Macron has spoken out on a number of France’s unresolved colonial legacies, including nuclear testing in Polynesia, its role in the Rwandan genocide and war crimes in Algeria.

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