Dana Faracos explores a few of France’s most superb cave artwork, richly painted and engraved snapshots of every day life 1000’s of years in the past. Time journey and uncover France’s first masterpieces on this information to prehistoric cave artwork in France.
For over 20,000 years, they scrambled via pitch black corridors, generally on all fours, with solely lamps of mammoth fats or resin torches to mild their method. Utilizing their fingers, items of flint, pigment (clay ochres, iron oxide, manganese oxide and charcoal), moss and twigs, they created extraordinary artworks. It’s exhausting to get your head round France’s earliest artists. Questions are limitless, solutions solely hypothesis. They not solely understood perspective, however completed lots of the goals of latest artwork— unbound by guidelines, suggesting quite than exhibiting, inviting viewers to take part within the which means, utilizing pure options so as to add depth and dynamism. When Picasso visited Lascaux, he may solely say ‘We now have invented nothing’.
Time journey to France’s first masterpieces
France’s grottes ornées are intensely shifting, magical, uncanny— and fragile. To be among the many few allowed inside you almost all the time must ebook upfront. For some caves, completely preserved as a result of they had been sealed up by rockslides, we will solely go to replicas—however they’re breath-taking, copied to the millimetre. As they are saying, ‘Unattainable is just not a French phrase!’ Right here’s a round-up of one of the best.
Lascaux (Montignac, Dordogne)
Vacuum-sealed till it was found in 1940 however stored secret till the tip of the battle, this ‘Sistine Chapel of Prehistoric Artwork’ (21,000 BC) is among the few polychrome painted caves ever found. It didn’t take lengthy for the breath of 1000’s of holiday makers to begin to destroy the artwork, and such was the common disappointment that the French invented the cave duplicate business. The newest facsimile opened in 2016 as a part of the Worldwide Centre for Cave Artwork, which makes an awesome introduction to the sphere.
Font de Gaume (Les Eyzies, Dordogne)
Simply 22km down the Vézère River (UNESCO World Heritage’s ‘Valley of Prehistory’) you’ll discover Font de Gaume. This jewel was all the time open, however was solely ‘found’ in 1901, after quite a few different finds of bones and instruments in native caves compelled ‘consultants’ to confess that cave artwork wasn’t an elaborate hoax. In Font de Gaume, Magdalenian-era artists (14,000 BC) left a powerful polychrome painted frieze of bison, together with horses and a novel, exquisitely tender scene, of a stag leaning over to lick a doe’s forehead.
Grotte des Combarelles (Les Eyzies)
It was the same story on the Grotte de Combarelles—the caves are so shut they even share the identical ticket workplace— and the engravings of horses, bison, mammoths, and lions are distinctive. Vestiges of color counsel these had been painted, too, however solely the engravings have survived.
Chauvet (Vallon-Pont-d’Arc, Ardèche)
In 1994, three newbie speleologists wiggled right into a cave that had been sealed up by a rockslide 21,500 years in the past and located ‘humanity’s oldest masterpiece,’ an astonishing 18,000 years older than Lascaux. Its Aurignacian-era artists stuffed it with herds of exquisitely depicted horses and lions (particularly) but in addition rhinoceroses, bison, reindeer, and even an owl. Werner Herzog was allowed inside to movie his 3-D Cave of Forgotten Goals (2010) however that was it. However on a close-by hill, in a constructing that appears like a pie pan, you may go to the world’s largest cave duplicate, Chauvet 2. E-book the final slot of the day, so you may linger till they throw you out. I may have stayed all night time.
Pech Merle (Cabrerets, Lot)
Sealed up 12,000 years in the past, and re-discovered in 1922, Pech Merle combines pure cave magnificence (and uncommon cave pearls) and drawings, the oldest of which return 30,000 years. Highlights embody the 7m ‘black frieze’ of 25 animals, the wounded man, and a pair of extraordinary bigger than life noticed horses, surrounded by craving unfavourable hand prints. Maybe most shifting are the footprints left by a baby lengthy, way back.
Niaux (Niaux, Ariège)
Excessive in a cliff, with an entrance marked by a spectacular metal prow, essentially the most stunning grotte ornée within the Pyrenees is one other cave that was all the time open for hundreds of years (therefore the graffiti), till its artwork was ‘found’ in 1906. Nothing has modified since, and also you’ll must stroll with a torch over uneven floor for 1.6km, passing black and crimson symbols that appear filled with forgotten which means. On the finish is the very good, vaulted Salle Noir, which looks like a sanctuary, lined with 70 beautiful charcoal drawings of animals from 15-14,000 BC.
Rouffignac (Rouffignac-Saint-Cernin-de-Reilhac, Dordogne)
Curiously, the truth that the partitions of this large cave (grottederoufignac.fr) 10km from Les Eyzies had been adorned with ‘beasts’ was described again in 1575, but solely in 1956 was it confirmed that there have been priceless Magdalenian works from 11,000 BC. Nicknamed the ‘Cave of a Hundred Mammoths’, you’ll experience an electrical prepare for 4km to one of the best of the artwork. There are literally 158 woolly mammoths, engraved and outlined in magnesium oxide, which researchers say got here from 450km away in Saône-et-Loire.
Cosquer (Marseille)
In 1985, Henri Cosquer was scuba diving within the limestone calanques close to Marseille, and 35m down, observed a crevice within the rock, and swam as much as discover—discovering a cave frequented between 33-19,000 BC, again when sea degree was 120m decrease, fantastically adorned with the Ice Age animals, and uniquely, a large prehistoric penguin. Since then, sea ranges have risen additional. However we will take a look at what he found at Cosquer Méditerranée, the duplicate constructed subsequent to Marseille’s Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean, the place you descend right into a watery world and board just a little boat. It’s a bit Disneyland-ish, however good enjoyable.
Cussac (Le Buisson-de-Cadouin, Dordogne)
In 2000, chef and speleologist Marc Delluc felt a give-away present of air on Cussac hill from a pile of rocks—which had blocked the doorway to a cave 30,000 years in the past. Delluc cleared a path and located what was quickly dubbed the ‘Lascaux of etchings’ for its fluid drawings of horses, bison, and a tiny headed lady with an infinite backside. Unusually, it additionally contained human skeletons within the wallows fashioned by hibernating bears. Too fragile to open to the general public, in October 2024 a Centre d’Interprétation opened in Le Buisson-de-Cadouin with copies of the sepulchres and among the etchings.
Dana Facaros has lived in France for over 30 years. She is the creator of French Meals Decoder app: all the pieces you wish to learn about French meals, and co-author of the Bradt information to Gascony & the Pyrenees and plenty of information books to France.
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