Grotte de Rouffignac

Can I interest you ladies and gentlemen in prehistoric cave art?

Not a patronising question, but one addressed to myself. Last summer we spent a couple of weeks in Les Eyzies in the Dordogne and visited seven world-class sites of palaeolithic paintings, engravings and sculpture. How to review these? An overview? Too much of a list. A group of two or three similar sites - ditto. One site, but which? Finally I decided on this site which ...
...the visitor experience and has, unusually, a whiff of controversy. So, if I fail to interest you in the art, you can cut to the story at the end.

In the immediate vicinity of the small village of Les Eyzies, in the Dordogne, there are about 150 caves with evidence of palaeolithic habitation, and of these about 25 have some kind of parietal (i.e. wall) art. This is an enormously intensive concentration of art, so it's no wonder a village ... more

Can I interest you ladies and gentlemen in prehistoric cave art?

Not a patronising question, but one addressed to myself. Last summer we spent a couple of weeks in Les Eyzies in the Dordogne and visited seven world-class sites of palaeolithic paintings, engravings and sculpture. How to review these? An overview? Too much of a list. A group of two or three similar sites - ditto. One site, but which? Finally I decided on this site which is distinguished in the extent of the art on display, the visitor experience and has, unusually, a whiff of controversy. So, if I fail to interest you in the art, you can cut to the story at the end.

In the immediate vicinity of the small village of Les Eyzies, in the Dordogne, there are about 150 caves with evidence of palaeolithic habitation, and of these about 25 have some kind of parietal (i.e. wall) art. This is an enormously intensive concentration of art, so it's no wonder a village with less than 1,000 inhabitants has the title of "Palaeolithic Capital of France" and is home to the National Museum of Prehistory.

Where to start? For the casual visitor, Rouffignac might be the ideal site. Some of the smaller caves offer long, ill-lit treks over frankly treacherous ground to see some dimly perceived markings which might or might not be a herd of rhinos. Here at Rouffignac you are transported on an electric train about 1 km into the depths of the cave, and when you get there the evidence of cave art is overwhelming, in-your-face, so that you can only gape at its extent.

A quick, but necessary, recap of what we are looking at, when it was created, and by whom. Time-wise, we are talking about 15,000 - 40,000 years ago, a long time span but things developed a little more slowly then. This is the palaeolithic era, the old stone age; tools were unpolished stone, but nevertheless could be quite small, delicate and "fit for purpose". People lived not IN caves, which were dark, cold and potentially dangerous, but in overhangs at the mouths of caves. Called "abris" in French, these overhangs are found in the Dordogne and Vézère valleys, so providing plenty of des res for our ancestors. They knew a good location when they saw it; it took us Brits till the 20th century to rediscover the Dordogne.

The art, however, IS in the caves, not the abris. (A major exception is the bas relief horses at Cap Blanc, but that is not our subject here). These guys took flickering animal grease lamps, little clay pots of minerals for colour, animal hair "brushes" and stone engraving tools and penetrated into the depths of the caves, sometimes hundreds of yards, to do their painting, drawing and engraving. Why not paint in comparative comfort outside? Why did they paint what they did? Why did they paint at all? The first of endless questions about this art.

So concentrating on what we do know, we see images of the world around them, but not landscapes and only rarely people. The overwhelming imagery is animals - reindeer, bison, rhinos, mammoths, aurochs, bears. These beasts fed them, provided clothes, grease and oil for lamps, bones for tools. Also common, but not so easily explained, are geometric shapes called "tectiforms" - a house-shaped outline with a v-shaped pitched roof. Tribal markings, signatures?

Thanks to carbon dating of material found above and in front of the art, it can be dated fairly accurately. Given scientists' delight in taxonomy, the era is divided into sub-cultures, each named after a "type-site" many of which are in and around Les Eyzies. So the earliest Mousterian culture, dating from about 40,000BC takes its name from the village of Le Moustier (you can see the well-defined abri from the road), and the latest Magdalenian culture, from 20,000BC when most of the paintings were done, is derived from La Madeleine. Inevitably there are sub-divisions within these, e.g. upper, middle and lower Magdalenian.

And the rest, despite the reams of research, is speculation. Were the cave interiors places of mysticism and magic, separate from the living quarters outside? Was the creation of animal images there a kind of prayer for success in the hunt? As these were large and dangerous animals were they simply evoking their fears? Or is the urge to create art intrinsic in human beings? As is the case down the ages, some paintings are better than others, and styles vary considerably, although the main "style" is a cartoon-type sketch. They also used natural cracks and projections on the stone's surface to create bas relief effects or to depict a feature such as an eye.

Any palaeolithic experts amongst you will, by now, be aghast at that quick gallop through what is a highly complex period, so let's move swiftly on to the visit itself.

Off we go. Choo, choo! Something a little incongruous about an electric train full of tourists to look at 20,000 year old art? Or possibly no more incongruous than driving miles in a car to get there, putting on walking boots, equipping yourself with a torch and penetrating into the darkness as if you were recreating palaeolithic conditions. Whichever way you look at it, there is an enormous gulf between us and them.

First stop is a frieze of rhinos on your right. About knee height, they are traversing left to right. But the main attraction is at the end of the line, the "grand plafond" or "great ceiling". Here the cave widens out into a small circular chamber and every available square inch is covered in drawings. It is a veritable explosion of creativity, a mad canvas of a demented stone-age scribbler. All the usual animals are here, although mammoths predominate. Rouffignac has been called the "cave of the hundred mammoths; in fact there are 158 representations of mammoths. The drawings and engravings are in all sizes and in various stages of completion, and on the great ceiling they overlap and intermingle frantically. Distinctively drawn, deftly created, these are "cartoon" characters, in which a few lines evoke accurately an easily identifiable object. The style is actually very modern.

You are allowed to alight from the train and given plenty of time to wander around and gaze. The guide is very knowledgeable, points out the highlights and answers questions. On the journey in, so as not to pre-empt what you are going to see, he describes the geological formation of the cave; on the way back he discourses on the palaeolithic lifestyle, and the speculations about the whys and wherefores of the art.

So you're duly astonished by what you've seen, the Sistine Chapel of cave art. Or is it? Let me introduce you to two characters, one English, one French, central to this little story.

Anybody heard of Glyn Daniel? If you remember a TV panel game from the 1950s in which he appeared called "Animal, Vegetable or Mineral" then you are even older than me. Glyn Daniel would, I think, have been a natural in today's TV academic personality cult. Eminent in his field, but a great communicator and bon viveur, he wrote a little book (sadly long out of print) called "The Hungry Archaeologist in France", a title that says it all. The hotels and restaurants where he relaxed after a hard day's archaeology still exist today and can still be recommended. Prince Charles studied under him at Cambridge, and in Daniel's hotel of choice in Les Eyzies, Hotel Les Glycines, there is a photo of Charles emerging from the hotel, no doubt his idea of slumming it on a field trip. He (Glyn Daniel, not Prince Charles) also wrote detective fiction in his spare (!) time, which is relevant to all this.

Abbé Henri Breuil was one of that breed of 19th century clerics found in both France and the UK, who helped along the development of many fields of scientific discovery. Educated, and with time on their hands, they could observe and catalogue and contribute conclusions. Abbé Breuil was fortunate in being in the right place just as the true age of cave paintings was being realised. His priestly calling was abandoned and instead he became the leading cave art expert of his day. He was central to the exploration and analysis of virtually all the caves we know today and wrote "Four Hundred Centuries of Cave Art", still a seminal work.

By 1956 when Rouffignac was being announced to the world, Breuil was nearly 80 but still active and still the "grand homme" of French archaeology. He visited Rouffignac and declared the paintings genuine. The owners of the cave then invited a group of 30 archaeologists of world standing, including Glyn Daniel, to examine the art and sign a declaration of authenticity. Many signed it. Daniel did not.

Why? Daniel applied not only his academic expertise but also his detective instincts to the accounts of when the paintings were discovered. Unlike Lascaux, which was discovered by chance when an unfortunate dog fell down a hole, many caves like Rouffignac had been known about for centuries; the importance of the paintings had not been appreciated and earlier generations had often helpfully added their own graffiti. Rouffignac is a huge cave system - two Dutch explorers in the 18th century got lost and died in it - and was well known to caving aficionados. Already extensively mapped and annotated, there was the added impetus of the other cave painting discoveries in the early years of the 20th century, which generated a root and branch search of the Dordogne. So why did it take until 1956 to find what is one of the most extensive collections of this period?

Prosecution witnesses say it wasn't there to be discovered. One caver reports seeing more drawings progressively appearing in the 1940s. Another wrote a letter to the Sunday Times stating categorically that no paintings existed in 1948. Yet another, from the Cambridge University Caving Club, told Glyn Daniel that on their expedition in 1939 they saw nothing.

Defence witnesses retort that these people are cross that they missed an important find. Many of the "believers" quote evidence of 18th and 19th century signatures overlying the drawings. As experts they also point to the nature and style of the art, and its similarity to other sites.

There is, of course, an intriguing third explanation. There WERE one or two small drawings that WERE missed by explorers, but these have been considerably added to by more recent copies.

What do I think? Dunno. I have no expertise to judge their authenticity simply by looking at them. To me the whole ceiling is quite unlike anything I've seen elsewhere, but then other sites like Font de Gaume, Combarelles and Cap Blanc are all equally different from Rouffignac and each other. I will, however, add my twopennyworth to the mystery by relaying what it says on the website: nowhere else has such a profusion of mammoths depicted - bison, horses and rhinos are much more common - and mammoth bones are one of the least common of animal finds.

What is true is that 50 years after its "discovery" it has been accepted into the mainstream as one of the great sites of the area - I can find no current references to the possibility of its being a hoax. Still, it does give the whole visit an added frisson.

Details: Rouffignac is about 18km north of Les Eyzies, just follow the signs. Opening times are 9am - 11.30am and 2pm - 6pm July and August, 10am - 11.30am and 2pm - 5pm April, May, June, September and October. Tickets are 6.10€ for adults and 3.80€ for children (6 - 12 yrs). There is no advance reservation as at some of the smaller caves, so in the high season you may have to wait a little. There is a shop and display at the entrance and (if I remember rightly) some vending machines; outside is a shaded picnic area. Take a jacket as it's cold in the cave. Because of the little train, this is one of the few such sites suitable for anyone with limited mobility. Photography is not allowed. The photos below are bought slides from the shop, but none of them really show the whole extent of the great ceiling.
 

...less