Lascaux Cave and the Museum of Prehistory

 October 21, 2021

Lascaux Cave and the Museum of Prehistory

We headed out this morning to the Vezere Valley to visit the Lascaux Cave and the Museum of Prehistory in Les Eyzies.  I had a concern. The extremely famous Lascaux Cave, with world-famous cave art, is not open to the public.  There have been three creations of reproductions, called Lascaux II, III and IV, the most recent, IV, being opened just five years ago.  It took many years to accomplish, as the physical structure of the cave was reproduced, and the wall art was reproduced using the same methods and materials as the original.  I was prepared to be disappointed, thinking it might be a Disney-ized version of the cave.  I was wrong, and I was hugely impressed.

 

A unique building houses the reproduction, immediately adjacent to the real thing.


The Lascaux Cave art was created by homo sapiens some 18,000 years ago during the ice age, and remains quite mysterious. The cave is 250 meters long and contains some 400 animal drawings.  The purpose, the choice of primarily large animal subjects, and the overlaying of animals one on top of another all remain unexplained. In addition, there are symbols—rectangles, squares, and dots, which remain a mystery.  Thirteen colors were used, with the pigments coming from crushed rocks.  Here’s a bull:


Here are some of the markings:

 


And here’s how they depicted motion with multiple figures:


Here are some deer:


Depictions of humans are very rare; here’s a bird-man, resembling some ancient Egyptian art:

 


Light was obtained by burning animal fat in lamps with wicks:

 


Pigments were ground with stones:

 


The reproduction was so well done that we truly felt we had experienced the real thing.  It was wonderful.  After the cave visit we traveled to the small village of Les Eyzies where we had lunch, and explored  the town.  It is yet another of the 100 most beautiful villages in France, and it is built under and in the shadow of a huge rock overhang:

 




We then visited the National Museum of Prehistory.  Just inside the entrance is a well-done timeline of the origins of homo sapiens.  It used to be thought that Lucy (whom we saw in Ethiopia) represented the earliest bipedal humanoid, about 3.5 million years ago, but now the earlies bipeds are thought to be 7 million years old. 


Europe had a large Neanderthal population and current thinking is that they didn’t die out, but rather interbred and we all have some Neanderthal DNA in our makeup.  The museum has created a model of a Neanderthal based on the bone structures and hair samples:


We had a 90-tour and talk at the museum with a very enthusiastic guide.  By the end we were plenty weary, but it was fascinating.  Back to the hotel for dinner and packing, off for Rocamadour tomorrow.


Comments

  1. Rwa442October 22, 2021 at 3:29 PM

    Fascinating!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ralph P. LockeOctober 23, 2021 at 2:47 AM

    Those Lascaux paintings remain astounding--the fluid shapes, especially--like animals in a dream. And so long ago!
    Great that the prehistory museum is up-to-date about how Neanderthals interbred with Homo sapiens.
    I wonder how it must have felt centuries ago to make one's home under a rock outcropping--as if the natural world were protecting you from harm, maybe.... There sure are a lot of hills and high rocks in that part of France, I notice.

    ReplyDelete

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