There are no burials from the Aurignacian (did they bury their dead at all, or perhaps leave them out – like the Siberian sky burials?) so it is difficult for archaeologists to determine how these beads were used. However, experimental work with beads combined with electron microscopy suggests that the Aurignacian basket beads were sewn on to something – presumably clothing.4 But why was Randall so fascinated by Stone Age beads?
‘Twenty years ago everybody laughed at me when I started working on beads. But it’s about what beads say about the societies that these people were making for themselves. The moment you can begin to construct identities by ornamenting yourself differently, by clothing yourself differently, you can provide a more complicated and effective organisation within a group, but you can also create identities across landscapes,’ he explained. ‘It may well be that the people in the Basque country felt themselves to be part of the same cultural entity as the people here in France – it’s a very large area. Not many people would say that Neanderthals had those sorts of societies. I think the ability to organise large numbers of people across large territories would have been an enormous advantage, and I personally think that’s part of the reason why Neanderthals wilted away.’
As the Last Glacial Maximum approached, northern Europe became virtually uninhabited, with ice sheets and permafrost blighting the ground. But in south-west Europe, modern humans clung on. The seasons there were moderated – as they are today – by proximity to the Atlantic: summers were cooler and, more significantly, winters were warmer than in central Europe. But although Iberia and southern France were south of the permafrost zone, the ground was still often frozen. In the Vézère Valley, the frozen uplands would have become uninhabitable, but the protected valleys still supported the hunters of the steppe. The Vallon de Castel-Merle and other valleys were not abandoned. It seemed remarkable.
But despite these harsh climatic conditions, the steppe-tundra grasslands of south-west Europe were fairly teeming with game. Mellars describes south-western France as being almost like a ‘last-glacial Serengeti game reserve’.5 Reindeer, horse and bison – all migratory, herd animals – remained common in southern France, along with ibex, chamois, red and roe deer, saiga antelope, and the occasional mammoth and woolly rhino.6 But perhaps this makes it sound too idyllic … ‘At the Last Glacial Maximum, the reindeer here reduce in size. Even for reindeer this was an incredibly cold environment: even the animals were stressed,’ explained Randall. ‘I know that when I was growing up in Canada, we had some winters in which we had five or six weeks when the temperature never got above zero. It starts to act on your head. I can’t imagine what it must have been like spending three months in a rockshelter in those kinds of conditions.’
Those hunters were under considerable stress, but, necessity being the mother of invention, they changed their subsistence patterns and broadened their food base: they were still hunting large animals like horse, reindeer and red deer, but there was an increasing reliance on smaller mammals, fish and birds. This intensified subsistence was accompanied by a change in technology: the hunters started to make finely chipped points with concave bases, characterising a whole new industry, called the Solutrean.1,7
As the grip of the Ice Age tightened, we might perhaps expect to see arts and crafts gradually diminishing, as life became harder. More Solutrean points to make, less time for art. But, rather interestingly, we see exactly the opposite. In the Vézère Valley the rockshelters not only continued to be occupied into the LGM, but the hardy Ice Age people of south-west France made their way deep into the caves that riddle the limestone hills – to paint.
Visiting the Painted Caves: Lascaux, Pech Merle and Cougnac, France
Ornaments, portable art and cave art are classic features of the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe, but they did not suddenly appear everywhere; rather, they popped up at different times in different places. As I’d seen, early examples of portable art appeared in Germany more than 30,000 years ago, as part of the Swabian Aurignacian. The ceramic models of animals and people from Moravia were much later, dating to 26,000 years ago. Pendants and beads – like those at Abri Castanet – appeared in the early Aurignacian, and even in the Chatelperronian, in France – but were not found in other parts of Europe until much later.
Cave art is concentrated in western Europe, in south-west France and northern Spain. The limestone formations in this area certainly provided the perfect canvas, but there are plenty of limestone caves in other parts of Europe and the world. To find out why cave art happened in south-west Europe in particular, we need to look at the environmental and social context of the paintings. To start with, we need some dates.
There are some very early dates for cave art in France and Spain, going back to perhaps 30,000 years ago, although some of these dates need to be treated with caution. Although many of these painted caves have been known since the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it is only very recently that archaeologists have been able to obtain meaningful dates and to fit the rock art into the wider picture, alongside other archaeological evidence. In France, archaeologist and cave art expert Michel Lorblanchet welcomed the opportunity to place the paintings in time, and wrote of the ‘post-stylistic era’, where cave art could be directly dated, rather than relying on style alone to establish chronologies. Where paintings included charcoal, radiocarbon dating could be used to provide a precise timing. Unfortunately, the majority of paintings do not contain charcoal or other organic remains, so they are not amenable to direct dating, in which case indirect dates from excavations within caves, as well as the style of the paintings themselves, remain important clues as to their date of inception.1
Sometimes it is very hard to get a decent date, even when charcoal exists in a painting. Organic residues from micro-organisms and carbonate from the cave wall itself can affect the date. Radiocarbon dates of black dots from the painted cave of Candamo in northern Spain range widely, and have been reported as being as old as 33,000 years ago – or as young as 15,000. It is difficult to decide which of these is the true age: the dots may be 33,000 years old, and may have been painted over again 15,000 years ago. Or perhaps the younger date is true – and the older date was obtained as a result of contamination with more ancient carbon.1 Similarly, dating of a black horse from Chauvet Cave in France has produced estimations of about 21,000 years ago (Magdalenian), and around 30,000 years ago (Aurignacian); the style of the paintings in Chauvet suggest that the younger date is more likely. Dating specialists certainly hope that advances in radiocarbon dating, and the use of different labs to test the reproducibility of results, will help to clear up such discrepancies in the future. But for now, the potential Aurignacian dates for Candamo and Chauvet have to be treated with caution.1
Experts tentatively agree, however, that most cave art, including paintings and engravings, seems to be part of the Solutrean and subsequent Magdalenian cultures of the late Upper Palaeolithic – in other words, it was created around the time of the LGM.2
I wanted to see some of this cave art for myself and so I made my way to Lascaux, near the town of Montignac in the Vézère Valley – the most famous of the Franch painted caves. Unfortunately – but entirely understandably – I was not to see the original cave paintings: the cave has been closed up while conservators attempt to eradicate the mould that has been threatening to destroy the precious paintings. Instead, I visited Lascaux II, the reproduction of the cave that is open to visitors. I had almost visited Lascaux some years before, but then decided against when I found that only the replica cave was open to viewing. This time, however, I had to admit that Lascaux II was worth a visit. I walked down a passageway lined with photographs of the original excavations, and into the ‘cave’. It was great – I was completely taken in. The cool air, the shapes and texture of the walls, and the paintings themselves seemed quite authentic.
But this was a reproduction – by a single, modern artist. The colours were true to the original – manganese black, oc
hre yellows and reds, a similar palette to the rock paintings I had seen in Australia. Lascaux II is a re-creation of the splendid ‘Hall of the Bulls’ and the passageway known as the ‘Axial Gallery’.
The original Lascaux was discovered by four teenagers exploring the hills above Montignac in 1940. A pine tree had fallen, and where its roots had torn up the earth the boys found a hole in the ground. The sinkhole led straight down to what would become known as the Hall of the Bulls. The young discoverers went straight through this chamber – presumably not looking up, or they would have seen that the walls curving in above them were emblazoned with huge bulls – and on into the Axial Gallery, where they first noticed the cave paintings. I stood in the replica Hall of the Bulls, gazing up at the beasts – the so-called ‘Unicorn’ (strange, as he patently has two horns), above me and on my left, followed by great black-outlined bulls, facing each other, with smaller, antlered deer filling the space between them. On the right-hand part of the ceiling were more bulls in black, and red ochre. Making my way down into the narrower, keyhole-shaped Axial Gallery, I could see a procession of animals on the ceiling above me: a beautiful black deer or reindeer with branching antlers, more bulls, and pot-bellied horses.
With my appetite whetted, I went off in search of an original painted cave: Pech Merle, in the Lot département. A flight of stone stairs led down to a somewhat incongruous white-painted door, through which I passed to emerge into a limestone cave deep within the hillside. I walked through magnificent chambers with huge flowstone creations, enormous stalagmites and stalactites, some of which had met between ceiling and floor to form massive pillars. The cave opened into a great chamber, high and wide and elaborately adorned with speleothem creations. It was like walking into a gothic cathedral. What on earth would it have been like for Ice Age hunter-gatherers? For someone who had never been in a church, let alone a cathedral? If we still wonder at the natural beauty of these caves today, just imagine what it would have been like for our ancestors. It must have seemed magical, otherworldly, and sacred.
I was so distracted by the natural splendour of the cave that I almost missed the cave art. But there, on one rare, smooth part of the cave wall to my left, were two beautiful horses outlined in black, facing away from each other, their hindquarters partly superimposed. They were covered in black spots which also flowed on to the background around them, as though they were somehow camouflaged. There were red ochre spots, too, on the belly of the horse on the left, and on the flanks of the other. I noticed that the flat wall of rock had a strange contour where it ended on the left – almost like a horse’s head. It was as though the artist had taken this suggestion from the natural shape of the rocky canvas and allowed it to direct his hand as he (or she) created these wonderful beasts.
The horses were stylised rather than naturalistic representations. They had great curving necks and small heads, rounded bodies and slender legs. Were they artistic representations of real horses or mythical beasts?
I imagined the artist painting them, in the darkness of the cave, with a tallow lamp flickering and lighting up small areas of the wall as they applied the black and red pigments. There were six negative handprints, stencilled on to the wall around the horses, some left, some right hands, but all matching. Were these the signature of the original artist or additions by a later cave painter?
Further along in the same chamber there was another hand stencil, this time in red ochre. I found these hands incredibly moving – it was amazing to think of that Ice Age artist, so many thousands of years ago, placing a hand on the wall and recording that moment. I felt very privileged to be seeing those images. It was like a message that had been passed down from ancient times to the present. What did it say? I know the real meaning is lost for ever, but for me those hands say ‘we are people, just like you’.
Pech Merle is incredibly rich in cave art; it contains more than seven hundred images, including many black-lined pictures of mammoths, bison and horses.
My next subterranean stop-off was the cave of Cougnac, and, outside the cave, on the wooded hillside, I met Michel Lorblanchet, the man who had spent so many years studying – and re-creating – the ancient art of the French caves. I had many questions for him, but first Monsieur Lorblanchet wanted to show me how the hand stencils were made. He had studied the pigments used and how they might have been delivered on to the wall, and had concluded that the ghostly handprints had been created by spitting colour on to and around a hand laid against the stone.
He demonstrated the technique for me outside Cougnac, on an exposed limestone cliff. First, he donned overalls and an artistic-looking black beret, then fetched a collection of things from the boot of his car: stones, charcoal and a bottle of water. Then he ground up some charcoal, using a pebble to crush the pieces to dust on a large flat stone. He explained that the black pigments in the cave paintings were usually manganese oxide: ‘It’s also black, but it could be dangerous for the experimenter. I spoke to a toxicologist in Paris and this man told me: don’t use manganese oxide, you’ll get poisoned. So, I prefer to use charcoal.’
It became clear why, because the next thing he did was to take a generous pinch of ground charcoal, and transfer it into his mouth. I could hear him crunching it up into an even finer consistency.
‘I grind the pigment between the teeth,’ he said, through blackened, gritted teeth, then he chewed some more, laid his hand against the stone and started spitting the charcoal around it. He spat quickly – ‘pup pup pup pup pup’ – and a fine black spray landed on the wall and on his hand with each spit. He had transformed himself into a human airbrush.
After five minutes there was a slight misting of charcoal around his hand on the wall. He would pause to put more charcoal in his mouth, chew it up, then resume the spitting, an action so fast that I worried he might hyperventilate. But Monsieur Lorblanchet was well practised in this technique. As a piece of experimental and experiential archaeology, he had re-created the entire Pech Merle spotted-horse frieze, in a cave, using his spitting technique – it had taken a whole week to execute. While I suspected there might be a quicker and more efficient way of transferring the paint on to the wall, (through a hollow tube, perhaps?) I admired his dedication. His technique was also based on ethnographic studies of Aboriginal painting in Australia, where handprints also exist. The pigments were similar, too. ‘Red ochre and charcoal, and manganese oxide have been used everywhere in different parts of the world,’ he said. ‘There are not many solutions. Some vegetables can provide pigment, but Palaeolithic people mainly use charcoal, manganese oxide and red ochre. Not vegetable pigment.’
After half an hour, Monsieur Lorblanchet stopped and stood back from the wall. His lips were black with wet, powdered charcoal, and his white beard had assumed a black streak in the centre. He took a swig from the water bottle to clean out his mouth. There on the wall was a modern hand stencil.
‘So I spit the pigment on the wall. It is the same method that was used during the Ice Age because I get a foggy image, a foggy hand stencil. And this sort of form is exactly the same as in Pech Merle.’
‘How did you hit on this method?’
‘Oh, it is difficult. It’s necessary to do it several times to get the right methods, yes. To have a good result it’s necessary to have some experimentation.’
Stencilling wasn’t the only method used by the ancient rock artists. Monsieur Lorblanchet described how lines would be drawn using fingers or chewed sticks to form paintbrushes. But stencilling was an excellent solution to applying paint to a rough or crumbly wall surface: ‘Cave walls are often full concretions, stalagmite and stalactite, so it’s impossible to draw with a finger. And if the wall is soft sandstone, and you paint with a brush or with a finger, you destroy the surface,’ he explained. ‘But with this spitting technique you can paint without touching the wall.
‘Pech Merle is very interesting. In this case, there are six hand stencils around the horses, sometimes right and sometimes left hands. B
ut from the same individual, the same man. And pigment analysis showed that the pigment of the horses is exactly the same as the pigment of the hand stencils. So probably the same man did the horses and the six hand stencils, at the same time.’
‘So you think those stencils are the artist’s signature, a maker’s mark?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I think the main meaning is really a signature. Like in Australia. Australians visiting burial sites, they left their hand stencils during the visit, just to say I went there; I visited my uncle or my grandmother and I left a mark of my visit near the burial.’
‘But the French caves are not burial sites,’ I volunteered.
‘No. It is very exceptional to find a burial in the European caves. But it could also be a way to say, I went to this church and left a mark of my visit.’
I was intrigued to hear Monsieur Lorblanchet talk about the caves in religious terms.
After the hand-stencil demonstration, Monsieur Lorblanchet took me into the cave of Cougnac itself. We walked down steps again, to a door in a wall and into a dank room displaying various stone curiosities, including pieces of medieval masonry and an elaborately carved stone sarcophagus lid. Then we descended more steps into the cave itself. Just as in Pech Merle, I was taken aback by the natural beauty of the cave. Cougnac was smaller in size, and the ceiling was much lower, but it was absolutely crammed with slender stalactites. It felt as if we were entering a temple, and I asked Lorblanchet if he thought that the caves had indeed been sacred places for their Ice Age decorators. He thought that they had: he saw the caves as sanctuaries, special places to which artists kept returning.
The Incredible Human Journey Page 33