Prehistoric France

After leaving Sarlat, we went to visit a cave in Rouffignac in the Perigord district to see the prehistoric paintings.  This area of France is home to some of the most interesting cave paintings in the world.

We entered the Rouffignac Cave riding on a small train.  This was a fun way to see the cave, but also helps preserve the paintings by keeping visitors away from the surfaces and limiting the heat produced by lighting which is powered by the train’s battery.  The area’s most well-known cave, Lascaux, has been closed to the public for a number of years now due to deteriorating conditions.  Apparently, the replica paintings in what is known as Lascaux II are beautiful, but I can’t imagine that the experience compares with traveling into a real cave.

Along the way into the cave we passed a large number of round holes in the cave floor.  It looked something like craters on the surface of the moon, but apparently was the result of hibernating bears who dug into the clay with their paws and turned around and around.  The walls of the cave were covered with long scratch marks where the bears had stretched and sharpened their claws after the winter’s repose.  Bones found during excavations in the cave reveal that three species of bears have inhabited the cave over the years, though they had abandoned this grotto before humans came to decorate the walls.

The cave paintings here date from about 13,000 years ago and depict mammoth, bison, ibex, horses, and rhinoceros.  Some of them are etched into the cave walls, while others are drawn with black lines.  The etchings were only visible when our guide shown his light on them from an angle.  They disappeared into the surrounding rock when the light was shining head on. Others are drawn with black lines made with manganese dioxide.

The artists who created these drawings were highly skilled.  Sometimes they incorporated features of the cave walls into the designs.  Not only are the drawings very aesthetically pleasing, but the techniques they used were quite sophisticated.  For instance, they choose different tools to achieve different effects, recognizing variations in rock types.  The details included in the drawings reveal deep anatomical knowledge of the animals they represent.  One of the mammoth drawings includes an anal flap that was only recently discovered on the frozen remains of a mammoth from Siberia.

The area with the highest concentration of drawings once had a very low ceiling and the artists must have painted while lying on their backs after crawling into the gallery.  A funnel in the cave floor leads deep below the gallery and may have lent special significance to the space.  One of the very few human images represented in prehistoric art is found in a narrow passage at the bottom of the well.

The French government has put together a nice website documenting the Lascaux cave, if you are interested in learning more about cave paintings.

After leaving Rouffignac Cave, we went to another historical site, La Roque St. Christophe. This limestone cliff, over a kilometer in length, was inhabited from about 55,000 years ago. It gradually developed into a fortified medieval town until it was destroyed in 1588 to eliminate a Protestant stronghold.

The location is simply beautiful, overlooking the fertile valley below. It might have been a bit of a climb to get back home each day, but the view and the security it provided must have been worth it for people to have lived here for so long.

There were a number of exhibits set up to give a flavor of life at La Roque St. Christophe. These devices were used during the Middle Ages to lift supplies from the valley floor.

This device was operated in a fashion similar to the trebuchet we saw at Warwick Castle. People walking inside the treadmill were able to life very heavy objects with little effort.

Cliff dwellers had carved furniture and shelves into the rock. These loops were used to hang meat in the butchery and similar loops were used to secure animals that were brought to shelter in the cliffs.

If you are interested in learning more about La Roque St. Christophe, here are some interesting photos and a video.