September 12 – Anniversary of a Cave Discovery

nPostednon September 12, 2015

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This photo shows two of the four
teenaged cave discoverers, plus
two of the adults they consulted about
how to keep their discovery safe.

nWhatndo you suppose four French teenagers discovered, on this date inn1940, that became of enormous interest to scientists, historians, andntourists alike?

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nIfnyour answer is “a cave,” you’re half right.

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nTheyndiscovered some cave paintings!

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nPaintingsnthat were created about 17,300 years ago!

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nThenearly humans who created the art in Lascaux Caves mostly paintednanimals, but they also painted abstract signs. They did not paintntrees or other plants, and they didn’t paint landscape. n

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nTherenare almost 2,000 different figures and signs on the cave walls, andnalmost half of them are animals. We can guess that animals must havenbeen very important to these hunter-gatherers!

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nLionsnand horses and bears, oh my!

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nHerenare some of the creatures painted on the cave walls:

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n364 horses (or equines)

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n90 deer (or stags)

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naround 25 cattle and 25 bison

n7 big cats

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n1 bear

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n1 wooly rhinoceros

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n1 human and 1 bird

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Human-hand stencils are far more
common than images of entire
human figures.

nManynof the painted figures look like animals but cannot be positivelynidentified as a particular kind of animal. Strangely enough, therenare no pictures that look like reindeer, even though we know fromnarcheological evidence that reindeer were these Stone Age people’snmain food!

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nOnenof the rooms has four images of black bulls, or aurochs – one ofnwhich is huge! At 17 feet (5.2 m) long, this is the largest animalnever found, before or since, in cave art.

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nLichennand fungus and mold, oh my!

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nIfnyou know anything about France in the 1940s, you know that Hitler and his Nazi army was making the nation a very unsafe place to be. But news of the the teenagers’ discovery of cave paintings still spread like wildfire, and many people came immediately to see the paintings. The boys right away started charging 40 cents per person to see the cave. A trusted teacher told the boys that it was imperative that they not allow visitors to go alone into the cave, and that they not allow people to touch the paintings. As a matter of fact, he told them that they should guard the cave day and night.

Three of the boys returned to school after their summer vacation was over, but the youngest boy, Jacques Marsal, pitched a tent at the cave’s entrance and really did guard it day and night! He became the main tour guide as well as the security detail – and he served in this way FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE!!!

nIt wasn’tnlong after the World War II that the Lascaux Caves were opened to the public for professional, commercial tours. (Still utilizing Marsal as a guide!) At that point, the number of visitors jumped to more than a thousand people per day!

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nUnfortunately,nas you might guess, more than a thousand people a day introduced anlot of contamination into those caves! The heat and humidity of allnthose people affected the cave environment, and even the carbonndioxide breathed out by all those people made a difference! Soonnscientists could see that the pigments used in the paintings werenbreaking down – and, even worse, lichen was growing on the walls!

nAs Rick Steves says, the cave paintings deteriorated more in 15 years than it had in the 15 THOUSAND years before that!

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nThencaves were closed to the public in 1963, but scientists andnpreservationists were still allowed to visit the caves. Since 1998,nhowever, black mold (a kind of fungus) has been growing in the caves.nIn 2008 authorities closed the cave even to the experts – only onenscientist could enter the cave for 20 minutes per week to monitornconditions in the cave.

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nApparentlynthe battle with the fungus is far from over, but at this point a fewnscientists are allowed to work inside the cave for just a few daysnout of every month. n

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nLascauxnII…and III…

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nAncareful copy of two of the most interesting rooms’ worth of cavenpaintings have been painted onto the walls of a nearby cave. Visitorsnare allowed to view these paintings – with no additional harm fornthe originals!

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nInread that an even more careful replica is being made of yet anothernroom, the Nave of Lascaux, using laser technology to project thenPaleolithic images onto layers of polystyrene.

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nWhyncave paintings?

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nAnthropologistsnstill do not know (and may never know) why so many Paleolithic (earlynStone Age) humans all over the world have painted the walls ofncaves. Many cave paintings are located deep in caverns, in rooms thatnare hard to get to, and there is no evidence that people actuallynlived in the rooms that are decorated with these paintings. That’snwhy many scientists think that the paintings might have ceremonialnand/or religious purposes.

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nThenearliest known cave paintings are at least 35,000 years old; thesenare located on one of the islands of Indonesia. Cave paintings havenbeen found in Africa, North and South America, Australia, Europe, andnmany parts of Asia. I hope you realize that that means all over thenworld, since humans never lived in Antarctica (at least not untilnscientists opened research stations there in the mid-1950s).

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nInread that Paleolithic people probably produced more rock art in thenopen air than they did in caves, but only six sites of open-airnPaleolithic art have survived until the modern age. So cave art isnprobably not typical of Stone Age humans, but far more cave art hasnsurvived!

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nAlsonon this date:

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