This article aims to analyse the reception of the most well known works and discoveries in European prehistory in Argentina and Uruguay. The aim is to assess how terms and typologies proposed by French authors were adapted and challenged at a local level. Prehistorians from the north of the Italian peninsula played a fundamental role in this process. The article also refers to the news published in the Argentine press about the discoveries made in Europe, which inspired new vocations, particularly under the impetus of the professors in charge of the chair of natural history at the University of Buenos Aires.