September 2011, Daily News

Revisiting the Chauvet Cave

By Dan McLerran   Tue, Sep 27, 2011

Werner Herzog on Cave of Forgotten Dreams from Laurence Topham on Vimeo.

For a seasoned spelunker like Jean-Marie Chauvet, a December day in 1994 held one of the defining moments of his life. Following a tell-tale warm draft of air deep inside a cave, he and his team mates dug until they were able to open a narrow hole, just large enough through which to crawl. They each in turn squeezed through, then crawled a few feet through a natural passage and dropped down about 30 feet by ladder to a new, soft earthen floor. They scanned the area with their flashlights. What they saw left them, for a moment, speechless.

"I kept thinking," recounted Chauvet, "We're dreaming. We're dreaming."[1]

Clearly they were not dreaming, as their discovery was soon confirmed as authentic by succeeding scientists and the news reverberated worldwide as one of the great discoveries of the 20th century. The caves were named after Chauvet by his colleagues, in recognition of his many years of cave spelunking in the area where the cave was found.

The Chauvet Cave, located in the Ardèche region of southern France, is now considered to contain the earliest known evidence of cave paintings. By 2011, over 80 sample tests from the paintings, torch marks, animal bones, and charcoal found on the cave floor had been taken using radiocarbon dating. The dates from these samples now suggest that there were two periods within the cave when artwork was done: 35,000 years ago and 30,000 years ago. The dating and interpretation are not without some disagreement between scholars, but this is all part of the process of continuing study and discovery.  

It wasn't just the dating that made the Chauvet Cave so rare. Hundreds of animal paintings depicted at least 13 different animal species, some of which are extinct. Some of the animals were typically hunted or used by Paleolithic hunters, such as horses, cattle, and reindeer. But others, not usually found on the walls of prehistoric caves, are predatory: Cave lions, cave hyenas, panthers, cave bears, and owls. Also represented are rhinos. There are red ochre hand prints and hand stencils (made by spitting or sprinkling the pigment over the hands while pressed against the cave wall surface). There are lines and dots throughout the cave, suggesting perhaps another kind of symbolic thinking or communication. The quality of the work is comparatively high with dating suggesting that some of the artists worked thousands of years apart. Were these the Michaelangelos and Leonardo Da Vincis of their time? The clay-like floor of the cave retains cave bear paw prints and large, rounded depressions of where they slept, as well as a child's footprint from a later period. There are charred effects of ancient hearths and carbon stains from torches that must have lit the caves. Finally, there were fossilized skeletons of at least 40 cave bears and the skull of an ibex.  

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Cave lions in Chauvet Cave. Wikimedia Commons

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Etologic horse study, Chauvet cave, The Adventurous Eye, Creative Commons

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Jean Clottes, one of the world's foremost authorities on ancient cave and rock art, has made it a mission to study the cave system. Beginning in 1998, he spearheaded the first research team to systematically and methodically study the finds. He postulates that the art may have been produced within the context of prehistoric shamanic practices, perhaps part of the early beginnings of human spirituality and religion. The evidence does not suggest that the cave was a continuous living space or shelter, although there are remnants of fires that indicate that the cave may have been used as a ceremonial or meeting place. In addition to the cave bear skeletons, a bear skull was found set upon a stone in the middle of one of the chambers, undisturbed since left there tens of thousands of years ago. Was it a Stone Age altar? 

"My hunch," says Clottes, "is that the artists came to this cave and found the bear skeletons. Perhaps they were impressed by the skeletons and considered the cave to be full of the bears' spirit, a powerful cave. They may have thought that, by painting some bears and other dangerous animals, they were capturing the animals' spirits, adding power in their own lives."[1] 

Moreover, the high sophistication, extent, and variation exhibited by the paintings, coupled with their apparent age, have forced scientists to reconsider the long-held notion that art of this prehistoric time period had to have been naively simple and primitive. One might argue that some of the paintings could be favorably placed beside any impressionist or abstract work found in any art gallery. 

A full inventory of the cave contents has yet to be concluded, and some portions of the cave system have not yet been explored. All of the cave chambers together measure a length equivalent to five football fields. The recent discoveries clearly have left far more questions than answers and many questions may never be answered, assuming the "answers" represent the truth. It begs the casual observer to ask about the prehistoric artists, as Butch Cassidy in the film, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" asked while being pursued by an uncanny group of skilled trackers: "Who are those guys?" Scientists will be poring over the Chauvet Cave finds for years to come. 

Few are privileged to enter the cave today. Among the few is Werner Herzog, the world-famous documentary filmmaker who, with permission of the French authorities, recently produced a film about the cave entitled The Cave of Forgotten Dreams (view video above). But even he had only limited access to its highly protected sanctum. The risks of damage to the paintings and other remains by human presence are too great. Simple human exhalation alone within the cave's interior environment will cause the paintings to be coated with fungi and deteriorate the fragile state of their almost miraculous natural preservation. The French government states that the public generally will never be allowed to enter the cave because of the environmental fragility. For spelunkers and explorers like Chauvet, however, this is no problem. There is much more out there to discover. 

"Now we go off to look elsewhere," he says. "This cave tells us that there must be others, with other treasures. And there are so many that we haven't yet explored."[1]

Those familiar with the limestone cliffs of southern France would probably agree.

[1] Spelunker's Passion Pays Off : Jean-Marie Chauvet and his small team of cave-diggers 'hit the jackpot,' finding a cache of Stone Age art.  February 14, 1995, Scott Kraft, Los Angeles Times.

Cover Photo, Top Left: Cave Lions in Chauvet Cave, Wikimedia Commons

Photo, Bottom Right: Horses, Chauvet Cave, Wikimedia Commons

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The Paintings of Chauvet Cave

By Dan McLerran

As Founder and Editor of Popular Archaeology Magazine, Dan is a freelance writer and journalist specializing in archaeology.  He studied anthropology and archaeology in undergraduate and graduate school and has been an active participant on archaeological excavations in the U.S. and abroad.  He is the creator and administrator of Archaeological Digs, a popular weblog about archaeological excavation and field school opportunities.