That was until a chance meeting over the weekend
with an American couple now living in the area who commented that the caves of
Perch Merle were a ‘must see’. So the caves were back on the list. Ironically,
we opted not to go to Perch Merle and chose to go to the Vézère
Valley instead. Based on the ‘research’ – aka a couple of blogs and TripAdvisor
reviews – this area had a high concentration of pre-historic caves and was a ‘gold
mine’ for archeological sites. The only trouble was that it was going to
require some serious effort to get tickets for the recommended cave of Font de
Gaume. The cave has a maximum daily limit of just 52 visitors and no
pre-booking allowed. Reviews and comments advised to get to the caves 2.5 hours
before the opening time of 9:30am. We were just over an hour away so that meant
setting off at 5:45am. “Kids, go to bed! We need to leave at 5:45am tomorrow
morning!” came the announcement around the house at 12:30am. Grumble, grumble…
We miraculously arrived promptly at 7am. The
last thing I wanted was to get there at 7:30am only to miss out on getting
tickets, so it was all or nothing. We HAD to get there by 7am. A few people had
just arrived before us so we were numbers 9, 10, 11, 12, & 13 in the queue!
Spots quickly filled up after us with people arriving one after the other. By
9am all the 52 spots were filled.
The ticket office opened promptly at 9:30am
and there was a very orderly system in place. Meanwhile, we had met and talked
to a few of our ‘queuemates’. After all a 2.5 hour wait at 7am is better with a
sense of humour and some company. A family with young kids from the US was
passing through the region enroute to Provence (5 hours away) and specifically
came to Dordogne just to see the Font de Gaume. Mum was well prepared with her 2018
Rick Steve’s Guide to France and was sharing information about the cave with
her kids. I asked if Miguel could join her ‘class’. If this was the one cave
they chose to see on their way through, I felt we had made the right choice.
Anything else we could see after this was icing on the cake.
We were able to get into the first English
group at 10am for Font de Gaume and the 12:15pm French group (no Engish group)
for Grotte de Cabarelles.
Font
de Gaume
Font de Gaume is one of the last remaining
caves with polychrome (colour) cave paintings that is still open to the public.
This is the reason why attendance is strictly controlled. Other polychrome
caves such as Lascaux and Chauvet caves in France are viewed as replicas. Many
other caves, if and when discovered, are not even made known to the public. Altamira
Cave in Spain is even harder to get into than Font de Gaume, with only 5 people
per week selected at random allowed to visit.
Groups were made up of 13 people. Given
there were 5 of us, it was almost like a private tour!
After the usual ‘do not touch walls’, ‘do
not take photos’ briefing, we made our way in and through the narrow cave
‘hallway’ until we were told to stop and form 2 lines facing one side of the
wall where our guide had indicated. We positioned ourselves and I was staring
at the wall in front of me. “There’s nothing here”, I thought. As far as I was
concerned I was looking at a blank cave wall. The guide took his torch and
shone it on the wall. “You’re looking at the first bisons”, he said. And suddenly
there they were! Out of nowhere suddenly the images appeared. Quite faint but
once outlined with the help of a laser pointer and with the shadows from the
headlamp they became clearly visible.
This is how it continued for much of the
tour. Images barely visible to the untrained eye, suddenly becoming obvious. It
reminded me a bit of those posters that you need to stare at (or look at
slightly cross eyed) and suddenly a 3D image pops out. Or trying to find animal
shapes in the clouds.
What was most impressive though was the
detail in the painting… the horns, the eyes and eye sockets engraved into the
limestone, the 3D perspective in using shading and light and dark colours, the
3D perspective by using the natural curves on the cave walls to form parts of
the animal, the tail, the layers of fur, the mouth, the tongue… these weren’t
random stick sketches on a wall. These were skilled artists! Even more skilled
given that they were creating these works of art in total darkness with nothing
but the light of a flickering oil lamp, using nothing but natural pigments
applied with whatever they had available – animal hair, twigs and branches,
animal bone, flints, moss, their fingers…
I don’t consider myself an art aficionado,
nor am I particularly interested in the ‘caveman era’. The most exciting thing
I’ve seen relating to this era is the mummified body of Otzi, the Tyrolean
Iceman, in a museum in Bolzano, Italy earlier in this trip. And even then, we
were in Bolzano for the Christmas markets – seeing Otzi was incidental. The
decision to see the caves was more of a ‘must do’ while in the area. How can we
say we’ve been to Dordogne and not see a single cave??? Needless to say, I was
a bit surprised that I found this fascinating.
Suddenly people from this era didn’t feel
so primitive. Suddenly they seemed quite sophisticated. Suddenly I found myself
wanting to see more caves, more cave art. I wanted to understand why. Why did
they paint them? What did these paintings mean? Why did they paint them so deep
in the caves? Why did they only paint animals and rarely human figures? Why
didn’t they paint landscapes or plants or maps of the local topography to
understand the land they were on? Why didn’t they paint local scenes from their
way of life? Of each other?
And as the lady at the end of our tour said
“I feel privileged to have seen this.” It’s so true. The other 2 similar caves
with polychrome paintings (Altamira in Northern Spain and Lascaux in France)
have already been closed to the public due to the damage caused to the
paintings. Who knows how long Font de Gaume will stay open to the public.
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| Waiting in the queue for Font de Gaume tickets. A 2+ hour wait early in the morning and in the rain. That's dedication for something I wasn't even sure would be worth the effort. It turns out it was! |
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| Miguel up bright and early so he gets the photo. Two girls asleep in the car as we hold their place in the queue. |
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| At the entrance of Font de Gaume showing the extent of the cave network. Many of the paintings and encravings were in very narrow passage ways deep into the cave. |
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| At the entrance to the cave. There is an airtight cave door that controls conditions inside the cave. It can only be opened for a limited number of minutes in a day. |
Grotte
de Cabarelles
Our 12:15pm tour group ended up being the 5
of us plus a French couple. We were told the tour would be in French but the
guide was bi-lingual so she spoke French for the couple and translated to
English for us and vice versa.
Like Font de Gaume, images seemed to appear
from nowhere – more obvious in the shadow of a lamp rather than with direct
light. Only obvious if you know what you’re looking for. Images of the artwork on
the internet make me wonder how the detail of the artwork was captured with
photography when they are barely visible to the naked eye. Is it just clever
lighting or was photo enhancement used to make the artwork more defined?
Unlike Font de Gaume though, there were
more images that were engraved and had lost the detail of their colour (if any)
due to the conditions in the cave. Still, the detail was impressive – the scratch
marks to represent the horses mane, the curvature of the horses mouth, nose,
ears, jaw line.
The fascinating thing about this cave was
that it was originally only about 1 metre in height – so they would have had to
practically crawl into this cave and create their artwork in extremely cramped
conditions. Why would someone do that? What would possess them to crawl deep
into a cave, in total darkness to make these drawings and paintings where no
one could see them? Why?
Grotte de Rouffignac
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| Sadly the only photo we have of Les Combralles. |
Grotte de Rouffignac
This is a massive cave 8kms long and quite
deep and wide so an electric train carries around passengers within.
My favourite piece of work in this one is
the 10-bison mural on a stretch of the cave’s side wall about 5-7 metres long.
It shows a well thought out mural with the artist depicting some sort of elementary
scene, as opposed to random one-off isolated animal paintings.
The other impressive piece of work in here
is the “Great Ceiling”… what appears to be a random collection of several
drawings of mammoths, horses, rhinos, mountain goats deep in the ceiling of a
cave that would’ve been no more than 1.5 metres off the ground – a pre-historic
Sistine Chapel! Or more like an artist’s sketch pad on the ceiling of a cave.
It’s believed that the work is from 3-4 different artists at most.
Again, the question is why. Why these
paintings so deep in a cave – a 10-15 minute ride deep by slow electric train?
Was it a sacred space? Was it a secret space? Was this their modern day
grafitti or ‘street art’? And why the obsession with animals? Maybe they were
smoking something and feeling inspired?
Lascaux
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| Entrance to Grotte de Rouffignac - one of the largest cave systems in the area. Transport around the cave system was via an electric train. |
Lascaux
After seeing the other caves I knew we had
to check out Lascaux. It seemed to be the cave everyone was talking about. Most
of the literature about the area talked about Lascaux. The kids had seen enough
of the caves and refused to go to Lascaux, so John and I went on our own.
Lascaux is a replica cave – one of the
reasons it wasn’t on top of my list. I wanted to see the real thing. We visited
Lascaux II which is the 1st replica cave built in the 70s and opened
in the early 80s. The original cave was closed to the public in the 60s
due to the damage being caused to the paintings by oxygen, carbon dioxide and
other bacteria introduced by human visitors. Not visiting the cave because it’s
a replica is a big mistake, in my opinion.
Lascaux was mind blowing - so much so that everything
we had seen in the earlier caves now seemed like child’s play – or an artist’s doodle
pad – when compared to Lascaux. The vibrant colour and completeness of the scenes
on the cave ceiling before me was something that represented a pre-historic
Sistine Chapel. As opposed to other caves that appeared to have random images
of bison, horses, bulls and other animals in seemingly random positions, the Lascaux
painting had composition. Even the 'Great Ceiling' in Rouffignac looked like child's play. ‘Michelangelo, eat your heart out’ was the first
thought that ran through my head – but he wouldn’t have even seen this cave, nor
known it existed! BUT, maybe it was vibrant because it was a replica – so I
asked how this replica compared to the real thing that sat underground 200
metres away. I was assured it is a complete replica, each curve, each crevice
of the cave duplicated manually with the most sophisticated technology they had
in the 70s. The result was an accuracy of the caves curvature and paintings within
a few millimetres of the original. Even the pigments, tools, and methods used to create the paintings were mirrored what they knew of the original. The vibrant colours and quality of the paintings were replicated exactly
as they were at the time the cave was closed to the public in the 60s... making it a snapshot in time.
Had we not seen the earlier
caves, I probably wouldn’t have believed that pre-historic man was capable of
creating this work – from perspective and composition to rudimentary animation,
they had it all. Even more impressive when you think about it is that all the
animals and their anatomy were drawn purely from memory, by candlelight, on a
cave ceiling! There were no photographs to study, nor did they have live specimens
in front of them. Few of the animals depicted were in motion too which meant
they were very familiar with how the animals moved – so sharp were their skills
of observation and memory. As we saw in Font de Gaume, how they used the natural
curves on the cave ceiling to create depth and dimension to their images was
more obvious at Lascaux. Then it occurred to me, the Renaissance introduced nothing
new to art. They only used the tools available to them in their modern day to advance
what was already intrinsically there… a long, long time ago.
Needless to say, after the impression
Lascaux II had left on me, we went home and told the kids that this is
something they HAD to see. It was a non-negotiable. They would’ve been dragged
kicking and screaming if we had to but I felt so strongly about their need to
see these caves and be aware of them… owing to the fact that I had reached the
ripe old age of 45 without knowing they existed! So back to Lascaux we went the
next day, first to Lascaux II then to check out Lascaux IV. I was a bit
confused by all these Lascauxs. Why so many?? So, we just checked them all out.
Essentially, Lascaux II is the first
replica made – back in the 70s and opening in the early 80s. Due to the limitations
of the technology back then they simply replicated the most impressive part of
the cave known as the Great Hall of Bulls. Lascaux III is a touring exhibition
of the cave paintings. I have no idea how that would translate but I’m sure it
would be equally impressive for anyone who can’t get to Montignac, France (where
Lascaux caves are – the original, Lascaux II and Lascaux IV). Lascaux IV sits in the same general area as the
original cave and Lascaux II. Opened in 2016, it sits in a modern building with
an Exhibition Hall and a more detailed and high- tech replica of the cave together
with a complete visitor centre and other exhibits about the paintings and the
materials and pigments used to create them. There are even realistic virtual
reality displays that Miguel and I played with that give you the sensation of walking
through the real cave… so real it made me nauseous. Personally, I preferred the
simplicity of Lascaux II and marvelled at what they had achieved to build such
an accurate replica in the 70s.
But the big question that still played on my mind through seeing all this was WHY? What did the paintings all mean?
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| One of the paintings of a bull in the Great Hall of Bulls. |
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| Part of the Great Hall of Bulls. A series of black horses convey motion and the idea of animation. |
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| Image of a horse (or is it a bull?) making use of a natural feature in the rock surface to create the eye. Also present is the use of shading between black and brown to create illusion of depth. |
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| Paintings on the ceiling of what is known as the Axial Gallery - a particularly high ceiling with a narrow access path in the cave. One interpretation of these images is that they represent some sort of transition between one life to the next through a kind of vortex. Animals are presented as floating and upside down in relation to one another. No clear horizon line. |
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| Rare depiction of a half human form with the head of a bird. A bison stands over the figure. Located in an area called 'the shaft' in the cave - difficult to access. |
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| Display of tools and pigments used in Lascaux IV - paint brush made of horse hair, rectangular stencil made from animal hide, blow pipes for airbrush effects, and natural pigments (manganese - black; iron oxide - reds; hematite - reddish brown) |
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| Display of paintings in Lascaux IV. Image of a suspected mythical creature with horns from the Great Hall of Bulls, followed by the series of 'running' black horses. |
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| Interactive visitors centre in Lascaux IV. |
But the big question that still played on my mind through seeing all this was WHY? What did the paintings all mean?
These questions were swirling around in my
head on the drive home so I opened it up for discussion and here are some of
our thoughts:
- Spiritual – doesn’t seem to
make sense. Maybe, but as Kat pointed out, they would have been more about
survival and the physical world around them (or so we thought). Were they
really capable of higher order thinking of intangible ideas? Also, we tend to
assess what we see based on our existing framework. Given that many of the
artworks as we know them today are linked to religion, perhaps the expectation
is that the art of the past is also linked to religion or spirituality – when
it may not necessarily be so. It’s just that that is the way we know it today
so that is how we think it would’ve been in the past – which may not always be
the case. Having said that, for the Aborigines, there is definitely a spiritual
component and a connection to the land with their rock art and Dreamtime
stories. We can confirm this because, fortunately, the Aboriginal race is still
around. But is it the same for the European counterparts? Some experts find the
interpretation of these cave paintings consistent with rituals of Shamanism but
we will never know.
- Documentation/Expression – just like we
photograph or want to paint a beautiful scene or piece of nature, could this simply
be their way of documenting the beauty that they saw around them? The reason I
say ‘beauty’ is because animals are usually depicted in peaceful, ‘at rest’
poses. There is nothing aggressive about their behaviour in how they are
represented. It’s as if the artist has taken note of all the finer details of
the animal’s anatomy to later be recreated on a cave wall purely from memory.
In Lascaux, however, some animals appeared to be in motion but again nothing
aggressive. And why is there no plant life or other aspects of nature represented? No trees, no mountains and rivers, no sunrise or sunset, no horizon.
- Communication – was this simply
their means of communication? If so, then why the limited depiction of reindeer
which was common in their diets, or why the need to paint these so deep in the
cave system? If they wanted to use this as a means of communicating with
others, wouldn’t it make more sense to position these paintings where they
would be easily found? Instead they are hidden deep within the caves. And why
no depiction of themselves as humans… except for a rare image deep
within what is known as ‘the shaft’ in Lascaux. Perhaps it was a way to warn
others of dangerous species of animals to look out for – but then again why put
them in a place so difficult to find? Perhaps to protect against the elements
and leave behind for future tribes to find?
Experts on paleolithic art have studied these
caves and all we are left with are assumptions and theories on an era and a civilisation
that we know very little about. One thing is for sure though – these cave
paintings created tens of thousands of years ago, to be discovered only in
the late 19th and 20th century, turned everything we (they)
knew about pre-historic man on its head. It certainly did for me.
PS. If you want to know more about the pre-historic cave art of France and Spain, this book gives an excellent overview. Written by someone who had the same questions I had, he went out to find some answers. I found out about this book from a 'queuemate' at Font de Gaume who was holding a tattered copy which looked well read. He read about the caves before visiting them. I, on the otherhand, read the book AFTER visiting the caves. For someone who didn't have an iota of interest in prehistory or cave art, I probably would've found the book boring if I had read about the caves prior to seeing them. As it turned out, our visit to the caves piqued my interest enough that I wanted to know more.
