Lascaux is the setting of a complex of caves in southwestern France famous for its Paleolithic
cave paintings. The original caves are located near the village of Montignac, in the department
of Dordogne. They contain some of the best-known Upper Paleolithic art. These paintings are
estimated to be 17,300 years old. They primarily consist of images of large animals, most of
which are known from fossil evidence to have lived in the area at the time. In 1979, Lascaux
was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list along with other prehistoric sites in
the Vézère valley.
History since rediscovery On 12 September 1940, the entrance to Lascaux
Cave was discovered by 18-year-old Marcel Ravidat. Ravidat returned to the scene with
three friends, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel, and Simon Coencas, and entered the cave via
a long shaft. The teenagers discovered that the cave walls were covered with depictions
of animals. The cave complex was opened to the public in 1948. By 1955, the carbon dioxide
produced by 1,200 visitors per day had visibly damaged the paintings. The cave was closed
to the public in 1963 to preserve the art. After the cave was closed, the paintings were
restored to their original state and were monitored daily. Rooms in the cave include
the Hall of the Bulls, the Passageway, the Shaft, the Nave, the Apse, and the Chamber
of Felines.
Lascaux II, a replica of the Great Hall of the Bulls and the Painted Gallery, was opened
in 1983, 200 meters from the original. Reproductions of other Lascaux artwork can be seen at the
Centre of Prehistoric Art at Le Thot, France. Since 1998 the cave has been beset with a
fungus, variously blamed on a new air conditioning system that was installed in the caves, the
use of high-powered lights, and the presence of too many visitors. As of 2008, the cave
contained black mold which scientists were and still are trying to keep away from the
paintings. In January 2008, authorities closed the cave for three months even to scientists
and preservationists. A single individual was allowed to enter the cave for 20 minutes
once a week to monitor climatic conditions. Now only a few scientific experts are allowed
to work inside the cave and just for a few days a month but the efforts to remove the
mold have taken a toll, leaving dark patches and damaging the pigments on the walls.
Geographic setting In its sedimentary composition, the Vézère
drainage basin covers one fourth of the département of the Dordogne, the northernmost region of
the Black Périgord. Before joining the Dordogne River near Limeuil, the Vézère flows in
a south-westerly direction. At its centre point, the river's course is marked by a series
of meanders flanked by high limestone cliffs that determine the landscape. Upstream from
this steep-sloped relief, near Montignac and in the vicinity of Lascaux, the contours of
the land soften considerably; the valley floor widens, and the banks of the river lose their
steepness. The Lascaux valley is located some distance
from the major concentrations of decorated caves and inhabited sites, most of which were
discovered further downstream. In the environs of the village of Eyzies-de-Tayac Sireuil,
there are no less than 37 decorated caves and shelters, as well as an even greater number
of habitation sites from the Upper Paleolithic, located in the open, beneath a sheltering
overhang, or at the entrance to one of the area's karst cavities. This is the highest
concentration in western Europe. The images
The cave contains nearly 2,000 figures, which can be grouped into three main categories:
animals, human figures, and abstract signs. The paintings contain no images of the surrounding
landscape or the vegetation of the time. Most of the major images have been painted onto
the walls using mineral pigments, although some designs have also been incised into the
stone. Many images are too faint to discern, and others have deteriorated entirely.
Over 900 can be identified as animals, and 605 of these have been precisely identified.
Out of these images, there are 364 paintings of equines as well as 90 paintings of stags.
Also represented are cattle and bison, each representing 4 to 5% of the images. A smattering
of other images include seven felines, a bird, a bear, a rhinoceros, and a human. There are
no images of reindeer, even though that was the principal source of food for the artists.
Geometric images have also been found on the walls.
The most famous section of the cave is The Great Hall of the Bulls where bulls, equines,
and stags are depicted. The four black bulls, or aurochs, are the dominant figures among
the 36 animals represented here. One of the bulls is 5.2 metres long, the largest animal
discovered so far in cave art. Additionally, the bulls appear to be in motion.
A painting referred to as "The Crossed Bison", found in the chamber called the Nave, is often
submitted as an example of the skill of the Paleolithic cave painters. The crossed hind
legs create the illusion that one bison is closer to us than the other. This visual depth
in the scene demonstrates a primitive form of perspective which was particularly advanced
for the time. Interpretation of images
In recent years, new research has suggested that the Lascaux paintings may incorporate
prehistoric star charts. Michael Rappenglueck of the University of Munich argues that some
of the non-figurative dot clusters and dots within some of the figurative images correlate
with the constellations of Taurus, the Pleiades and the grouping known as the "Summer Triangle".
Based on her own study of the astronomical significance of Bronze Age petroglyphs in
the Vallée des Merveilles and her extensive survey of other prehistoric cave painting
sites in the region—most of which appear to have been selected because the interiors
are illuminated by the setting sun on the day of the winter solstice—French researcher
Chantal Jègues-Wolkiewiez has further proposed that the gallery of figurative images in the
Great Hall represents an extensive star map and that key points on major figures in the
group correspond to stars in the main constellations as they appeared in the Paleolithic.
An alternative hypothesis proposed by David Lewis-Williams and Jean Clottes following
work with similar art of the San people of Southern Africa is that this type of art is
spiritual in nature relating to visions experienced during ritualistic trance-dancing. These trance
visions are a function of the human brain and so are independent of geographical location.
Nigel Spivey, a professor of classic art and archeology at the University of Cambridge,
has further postulated in his series, How Art Made the World, that dot and lattice patterns
overlapping the representational images of animals are very similar to hallucinations
provoked by sensory-deprivation. He further postulates that the connections between culturally
important animals and these hallucinations led to the invention of image-making, or the
art of drawing. Further extrapolations include the later transference of image-making behavior
from the cave to megalithic sites, and the subsequent invention of agriculture to feed
the site builders. Some anthropologists and art historians also
theorize that the paintings could be an account of past hunting success, or could represent
a mystical ritual in order to improve future hunting endeavors. This latter theory is supported
by the overlapping images of one group of animals in the same cave-location as another
group of animals, suggesting that one area of the cave was more successful for predicting
a plentiful hunting excursion. Applying the iconographic method of analysis
to the Lascaux paintings, Thérèse Guiot-Houdart attempted to comprehend the symbolic function
of the animals, to identify the theme of each image and finally to reconstitute the canvas
of the myth illustrated on the rock walls.
Julien d'Huy and Jean-Loïc Le Quellec showed that certain angular or barbed signs of Lascaux
may be analysed as "weapon" or "wounds". These signs affect dangerous animals—big cats,
aurochs and bison—more than others and may be explained by a fear of the animation of
the image. Another finding supports the hypothesis of half-alive images. At Lascaux, bison, aurochs
and ibex are not represented side by side. Conversely, one can note a bison-horses-lions
system and an aurochs-horses-deer-bears system, these animals being frequently associated.
Such a distribution may show the relationship between the species pictured and their environmental
conditions. Aurochs and bison fight one against the other, and horses and deer are very social
with other animals. Bison and lions live in open plains areas; aurochs, deer and bears
are associated with forests and marshes; ibex habitat is rocky areas, and horses are highly
adaptive for all these areas. The Lascaux paintings' disposition may be explained by
a belief in the real life of the pictured species, wherein the artists tried to respect
their real environmental conditions. Less known is the image area called the Abside,
a roundish, semi-spherical chamber similar to an apse in a Romanesque basilica. It is
approximately 4.5 meters in diameter and covered on every wall surface with thousands of entangled,
overlapping, engraved drawings. The ceiling of the Apse, which ranges from 1.6 to 2.7
meters high as measured from the original floor height, is so completely decorated with
such engravings that it indicates that the prehistoric people who executed them first
constructed a scaffold to do so. Threats
The opening of the Lascaux cave after World War II changed the cave environment. The exhalations
of 1,200 visitors per day, presence of light, and changes in air circulation have created
a number of problems. In the late 1950s the appearance of lichens and crystals on the
walls led to closure of the caves in 1963. This led to restriction of access to the real
caves to a few visitors every week, and the creation of a replica cave for visitors to
Lascaux. In 2001, the authorities in charge of Lascaux changed the air conditioning system
which resulted in regulation of the temperature and humidity. When the system had been established,
an infestation of Fusarium solani, a white mold, began spreading rapidly across the cave
ceiling and walls. The mold is considered to have been present in the cave soil and
exposed by the work of tradesmen, leading to the spread of the fungus which was treated
with quicklime. In 2007, a new fungus, which has created grey and black blemishes, began
spreading in the real cave. Organized through the initiative of the French
Ministry of Culture, an international symposium titled "Lascaux and Preservation Issues in
Subterranean Environments" was held in Paris on February 26 and 27, 2009, under the chairmanship
of Jean Clottes. It brought together nearly three hundred participants from seventeen
countries with the goal of confronting research and interventions conducted in Lascaux Cave
since 2001 with the experiences gained in other countries in the domain of preservation
in subterranean environments. The proceedings of this symposium were published in 2011.
Seventy-four specialists in fields as varied as biology, biochemistry, botany, hydrology,
climatology, geology, fluid mechanics, archaeology, anthropology, restoration and conservation,
from numerous countries contributed to this publication.
The problem is ongoing, as are efforts to control the microbial and fungal growths in
the cave. The fungal infection crises have led to the establishment of an International
Scientific Committee for Lascaux and to rethinking how, and how much, human access should be
permitted in caves containing prehistoric art.
See also Cave of Altamira
Prehistoric art Art of the Upper Paleolithic
List of Stone Age art List of archaeological sites by country
List of caves Cave painting
References
Further reading Curtis, Gregory. The Cave Painters: Probing
the Mysteries of the World's First Artists. New York, New York, USA: Knopf. ISBN 1-4000-4348-4
Lewis-Williams, David. The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art. Thames
and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-28465-2 Bataille, Georges. The Cradle of Humanity:
Prehistoric Art and Culture. New York, New York: Zone Books. ISBN 1-890951-55-2
Joseph Nechvatal, Immersive Excess in the Apse of Lascaux, Technonoetic Arts 3, no3.
2005 B.et G. Delluc, Le Livre du Jubilé de Lascaux
1940-1990, Société historique et archéologique du Périgord, supplément au tome CXVII, 1990,
155 p., ill. B. et G. Delluc, 2003 : Lascaux retrouvé.
Les recherches de l'abbé André Glory, Pilote 24 édition, 368 p., ill.
B. et G. Delluc, 2006 : Discovering Lascaux, Sud Ouest, nouvelle édition entièrement
revue et très augmentée, 80 p., ill. plans et coupe.
B. et G. Delluc, 2008 : Dictionnaire de Lascaux, Sud Ouest, Bordeaux. Plus de 600 entrées
et illustrations. Bibliographie. ISBN 978-2-87901-877-5. B. et G. Delluc, 2010 : Lascaux et la guerre.
Une galerie de portraits, Bull. de la Soc. historique et arch. du Périgord, CXXXVI,
2e livraison, 40 p., ill., bibliographie. A. Glory, 2008 : Les recherches à Lascaux.
Documents recueillis et présentés par B. et G. Delluc, XXXIXe suppl. à Gallia-Préhistoire,
CNRS, Paris. Joseph Nechvatal, 2011: Immersion Into Noise,
University of Michigan Library's Scholarly Publishing Office. Ann Arbor.
External links Lascaux Cave Official Lascaux Web site, from
the French Ministry of Culture Save Lascaux Official website of the International
Committee for the Preservation of Lascaux Lascaux Cave Art Symposium The Bradshaw Foundation