Jean Clottes is six feet tall, slender and athletic. At seventy-two, he is officially retired, although retirement in his case does not mean he has stopped working. He works constantly. Retirement means only that he no longer holds any official position in the French archaeological bureaucracy as he had for so many years. (And yes, in France there is a bureaucracy that controls archaeology.)
He's lived all his life around Foix, a lovely provincial town about forty miles from the border with Spain. After beginning his career as an English teacher in a local high school, Jean rose to international eminence in prehistory, a virtually impossible climb. He did it by intelligence, by charisma, but above all by hard, concentrated labor over many years.
In 1959, when he was thirty and teaching in the high school, he began studying archaeology, commuting between Foix and the university in Toulouse. In those days he was concentrating on dolmens, Neolithic structures with two upright stones supporting a third stone across the top. Dolmens are rather like the megaliths at Stonehenge except that they are smaller and stand alone. They dot the landscape across France and Great Britain. Clottes's doctoral thesis was an inventory of more than five hundred dolmens in the Lot region of France. At that time he was really nothing more than an older-than-average graduate student, but his talent and energy were already apparent. On January i, 1971, twelve years after he had begun his studies, he was appointed director of prehistoric antiquities for the Midi-Pyrenees, an area larger than Switzerland. The post was more prestigious than lucrative. He received only three hundred francs a month as an indemnity, which was not enough to permit him to quit teaching English at the high school.
Nevertheless, that appointment determined the rest of his life. In his new position he discovered to his surprise that other government agencies and elected officials assumed he was an expert on all prehistoric remains including painted caves, which he was not. When new caves were discovered, as they were, and when issues arose concerning how to preserve the caves and their art, which they did, he was the one whom local officials turned to for answers, decisions, and, most daunting of all, direction.
Not exactly in a panic, but certainly in a hurry, Jean began to learn what he could. He made friends among archaeologists working in the caves, attended conferences, and worked on some archaeological surveys of particular caves. He finished his thesis on the dolmens in 1974, and after that he was able to quit the high school and devote himself entirely to the caves.
That's when his prodigious output of scientific work really began. By now his bibliography is almost absurdly long. It contains over three hundred articles and more than twenty books. In particular he wrote an extensive study of Niaux, one of Breuil's six most important caves. Along with Robert Begouen and several others, he did extensive research on the Volp system of caves, and at one time he thought of devoting the rest of his career to their study. Beginning in 1988 he spent years directing excavations at a cave named Le Placard, where his team discovered more than six hundred engraved rocks. The research team was able to date the oldest engraving to more than 20,000 years ago and to show that signs like those on the rocks in Le Placard appeared in other caves spread across a wide region of France. During that time he trained and encouraged a whole generation of prehistorians. In 1992 he became general inspector for archaeology at the Ministry of Culture and a year later the scientific adviser for prehistoric art for the Ministry. He held that post until 1999, when he turned sixty-six and was required to retire. During the 1990s it seemed that whenever an important new cave was discovered, it was Jean Clottes who got to direct the research and to determine who would have access and who would not.
Although Jean is forceful and demanding when it comes to work, he is not a difficult personality. On the contrary, he is charming and easy to get along with. He once arrived in the United States for a lecture tour that was to last two weeks with just one large leather pouch slung over his shoulder. He endured the inevitable string of nightly dinners with strangers and the shuffling from airport to hotel to lecture hall with patience and good humor. But his success in a bureaucracy like French archaeology, where for him to receive a plum inevitably meant that someone else lost out, created resentment in some quarters as well as the notion that it would be nice sometime just to see him take a fall. With the discovery of a cave named Cosquer in the cliffs near Marseilles in 1991, and with Jean Clottes constantly in the media explaining the new discovery, this faction thought the moment for that fall had arrived.
Marseilles is the center of undersea diving in France, and Henri Cosquer was the director of a diving school nearby. The cliffs along the shore contain networks of underwater caves. Cosquer and divers like him took every opportunity to explore them, despite—or perhaps because of—the great danger they present. In September 1985 Cosquer noticed a small hole in the rock that was the entrance to a tunnel 130 feet under the surface. Over the next several days, he slowly worked his way through the tunnel until he finally emerged into a cave filled with forests of beautifully colored stalagmites and aragonite crystals in bizarre shapes. He returned several times that fall but didn't tell anyone else about the cave. It was his secret place.
After that fall, six years passed before Cosquer could return to his cave. In July 1991 he made his way through the tunnel again and this time saw something even more spectacular than the stalagmites and crystals: a human hand stenciled in red on a wall. Here was a discovery he couldn't keep secret. At various times that summer he led five or six friends through the tunnel into the cave and they soon found most of the paintings and engravings that have made Cosquer one of the two greatest discoveries in France since Lascaux.
Cosquer took photographs and videos of all the art, but he wasn't sure what to do with them or how to handle his great discovery. As he pondered, a tragedy occurred that affected his thinking. On September 1, four divers visiting from Grenoble happened on the entrance to the tunnel and tried to follow it even though they lacked a safety line and other basic cave-diving equipment. The divers lost their way and panicked. Only one made it out alive. As it happened, Henri Cosquer was part of the hastily formed rescue team that found the three bodies. Two days later, on September 3, 1991, he took his photographs and videos and revealed his discovery to the Naval Affairs Headquarters in Marseilles. The navy officials sent the news upstream to Paris, where it quickly reached Jean Clottes at the Division of Archaeology at the Ministry of Culture.
Obviously the first step was to determine if the paintings and engravings were authentic. A panel quickly formed, with Jean Clottes as the scientific adviser who examined the photographs and video Cosquer had taken to substantiate his claims. The photographs showed clearly that the paintings were often covered with calcite, which was a sign of their antiquity. Still, an expedition led by Jean Courtin, a prehistorian who was also an experienced scuba diver, entered the cave on September 18. They took more photographs, examined many of the paintings closely, and brought out samples of charcoal that still remained on the cave floor. Courtin reported that the paintings and engravings had tiny crystallizations that proved their authenticity to him. Radiocarbon dating demonstrated that the charcoal from the floor, which also had an antique patina, was over 18,000 years old. That didn't mean that the paintings were the same age but did establish that people had entered the cave during that era. Clottes and Courtin were satisfied that this and other evidence Courtin had gathered proved that the cave was genuine. The entrance was underwater now, but at that time the Mediterranean had been about three hundred feet lower than it is today.
The scientists were able to accomplish this work while the existence of the cave was still a secret from the general public. But in mid-October, just weeks after Cosquer revealed his discovery to the naval officials, the news was leaked to two local papers. One, Le Meridional, published the story under the inspired headline “Twenty Thousand Years Beneath the Sea.” Suddenly Jean Clottes found himself besieged by radio, television, newspapers, and magazines from all around t
he world. His position was delicate. On one hand, he hadn't himself been inside the cave; moreover, the demands of the media were distracting him and the other scientists from their work. On the other hand, in the bureaucratic wars for funding archaeology in France, public interest and support for certain projects can be important. Favorable news stories can help as well. So despite the inconvenience they caused, the media had to be courted.
A separate danger worried Clottes as well. In the past, publicity about new discoveries had attracted thieves and vandals, who could destroy the find. The news also attracted the merely curious, who without meaning to could damage the art and archaeological evidence on the floor of a cave. The result was that at a press conference in Paris the minister of culture decreed that he would protect the cave immediately as a historical monument.
That was the moment when the reaction began. It's not clear exactly why. Perhaps it was simple jealousy, since the cave was now closed and Jean had become the chairman of the official committee in charge of preserving and studying it. Whatever the reason for the reaction, in the following weeks various prehistorians began to question the authenticity of the cave. In particular Denis Vialou, a professor at the natural history museum in Paris and a well-known prehistorian, declared in November in a newspaper interview, “I am absolutely convinced that it's a fake.” He repeated this assertion in television and radio broadcasts. Soon Arlette Leroi-Gourhan, the widow of Andre Leroi-Gourhan, joined the chorus, as did Paul Bahn, a British prehistorian. Bahn wrote an article in the Independent on Sunday that explained the arguments on both sides but concluded by saying, “doubts persist.” In February 1992 a contentious article appeared in Science et Vie, a national magazine for the general public, under the title “A Shadowy Cave.” “Denis Vialou remains skeptical,” the article said. “Some other important specialists in the painted caves like Gilles and Brigitte Delluc, as well as Arlette Leroi-Gourhan, share his doubts. They evoke the fact that no scientific dossier has been transmitted to them and deplore the temporary closing of the cave since it was classified as a historical monument.” The article continued in an arch and superior tone about one engraving it called the “Provencal penguin,” about the “almost childlike mediocrity” of other figures, and about paintings it called “unskilled copies.” Even the calcite deposits were suspect: “The calcite deposits on the figures do not prove their age: many calcium deposits can be found in the tunnels of the Paris Metro.” Besides, “it is possible to make calcite artificially.”
Jean Clottes and Jean Courtin took these articles as personal attacks on their judgment and integrity. While remaining stoical in public, Clottes ground his teeth in private. He made his response in July 1992 in an article he coauthored in the Bulletin de la Societe Prehistorique Frangaise. He concludes his argument with one grand paragraph: “For this collection to be false, the forger would have had to be extremely knowledgeable about Paleolithic art so as to commit no error in the choice of themes and techniques, while at the same time introducing spectacular innovations that were still plausible. He would have had to be an excellent diver and an equally fine artist. He would have had to succeed in reconstituting an ancient type of calcite coating not only on the paintings but also on the ceilings and the neighboring walls. He would have had to patinate the engravings, procure an abundance of charcoal 18,500 years old belonging to a species of tree growing in a cold climate, and construct hearths and coat them with calcite even beneath the water. Finally, he would have had to work very discreetly (at night?) in order not to draw attention to repeated dives in a very busy location, as well as leave no trace of his activities in the cave.”
Nevertheless a few die-hards like Denis Vialou persisted in their doubts. Finally, just a few months later, Jean Clottes and various collaborators published another article in the Bulletin concerning radiocarbon dates from Cosquer. The carbon samples used in the dating had been collected by Jean Courtin and came from charcoal left on the floor and from minute specks of organic pigment chipped from various paintings. One of the charcoal samples had already yielded a date about 18,500 years ago. Five pigment samples taken from paintings of animals proved to be between 19,000 and 18,500 years old. Obviously the charcoal and the paintings were contemporaneous, and the paintings were genuine. Two other pigment samples came from hand stencils and incomplete figures. One figure was more than 26,000 years old and one hand stencil was more than 27,000 years old. Two charcoal samples came from fires that were just as old. The dates showed that there had been two periods of activity in Cosquer, and at last these dates proved the authenticity of the paintings beyond any doubt. More important, 27,000 years was, as Clottes wrote, “presently the oldest date obtained directly from the pigment of a wall painting”—and here he could not resist a brief moment of nonscientific, triumphant glee— “in the whole world.”(Italics are those of Clottes et al.)
Jean Clottes was fifty-eight in 1991 when Cosquer was discovered. Since the entrance was underwater, he would have to learn to scuba dive in order to see the cave for himself. So, despite his age, he did. The entrance through a tunnel was a challenging technical feat even for an experienced diver. The first time Jean attempted it he got stuck and barely managed to wedge himself through with the help of the professional divers who accompanied him. Nevertheless, he persisted. In all he made twenty-four dives into Cosquer.
Since the cave contained the remains of hearths, which contain the remains of burnt Scottish pine, and since some of the paintings used charcoal for black pigment, Cosquer was a perfect cave for radiocarbon dating. Of the two periods represented in the cave, the older, from about 27,000 years ago, consists entirely of finger tracings on the walls and stencils of hands. The paintings of animals, in which horses predominate but which include three great auks and some seals, date to 18,000 years ago. There are no signs of habitation during either occupation. Perhaps the opening was lost or became covered over only to be rediscovered 9,000 or 10,000 years later.
The hands are especially interesting because just under a third of them have missing fingers. There are 65 hands in all, 44 stenciled in black in a chamber at the farthest reaches of the cave and 21 stenciled in red on one wall closer to the entrance. Of the total, 43 are left hands and 22 right.
At least a dozen caves have stenciled hands—Les Trois-Freres and Font-de-Gaume each have 5—and the hands in a few, particularly a cave named Gargas in the Pyrenees, similarly have fingers missing. Gargas has 231 hands, but only 124 are clear enough to read with confidence. Of those just 10 are complete, leaving 114 with missing fingers. Gargas was discovered at the beginning of the twentieth century and precipitated nearly a century of bitter disputes. Some scholars maintained that the missing fingers were evidence of ritual mutilation. Others thought hunters had lost fingers because of extreme frostbite, while still others blamed debilitating diseases or extreme malnutrition. Those theories have few adherents today. For one thing, thumbs are never missing—and why would frostbite or disease always spare the thumb? But, more simply, subsequent experiments have shown that bending down one or more fingers before blowing the paint on produces the same effect. It's more likely that holding down this or that finger was a code. Leroi-Gourhan wrote an entertaining paper showing how such a code might have worked, although he made no claim to having cracked the one at Gargas.
Gargas is more than 250 miles across mountainous territory from Cosquer, which suggests how much contact there was and how unified culture could be across a wide area, even 27,000 years ago. Of course, there were regional differences. In Gargas over half the “mutilated” hands have all four fingers held down with just the thumb remaining. At Cosquer the most common position for mutilated hands was with the ring and little fingers held down; only two hands show all four fingers held down. That could mean that the hand signals used one code at Gargas and a different one at Cosquer. Or it could be that the same code was used in both caves but the messages are quite different.
And Cosquer contained a surprise: a “k
illed man.” It was a simple drawing similar to a drawing that had come to light in 1922 with the discovery of a cave named Pech-Merle. One slab of rock in the cave at Pech-Merle had the peculiar image of a man outlined in red. He's standing but his legs are much shorter than his body; his arms are short too, and he has an odd, swollen head. All this gives him the appearance of a precocious infant. Strangest of all, his body is pierced by eight lines, four on his front and four on his back. Thirty years later Cougnac was discovered about seventy miles northwest of Pech-Merle. It had two figures that were similar, although more bent at the waist. Lines pierced their bodies. Although other explanations have been offered, the men appeared to have been killed by spears, perhaps even tormented by thrusts of spears until they died.
Those two caves are two hundred miles northwest of Cosquer, but they date to 20,000 years ago, roughly the same era as Cos-quer's second period. And now Cosquer had revealed yet another killed man. He has the same odd body and short legs and arms, but here he has pathetically fallen on his back. A long line, presumably a spear, has rammed through his back, burst from his chest, and taken part of his head with it.
The meaning of these four killed men, all so similar but in widely separated caves, is anyone's guess. Was it the image of some great narrative? The commemoration of a past tragedy or the just punishment of a transgressor? Or something else entirely? Certainly the killed men, along with the scenes of men confronting bisons in Lascaux and Villars, show that the Ice Age hunters lived in a civilization replete with classic stories. The killed man shows that the world of the hunters was not an innocent Eden. At least one of those classic stories concerned the violence of man against man.
The Cave Painters Page 18