We traveled to Les Eyzies? today. Here is where prehistory abounds. It is in the mountains that were formed millions of years ago by ancient rivers, carving out of the limestone these great valleys. It is in and around these great limestone structures that our ancient homo sapien ancestors lived. And it is here where the first beginnings of art arose. Lots and lots of cave art. And lots and lots of skeletal and artifacts discovered in this Peregeuex region. All the little villages in the area are where we get the names for the Mousterian and Magdelinian culture, etc. Cro Magnon: cro means rock shelter and magnon was Mr. Magnon, the man who owned the property where the skeleton was found. It is spectacular here. So many rivers and places to explore. There are lots of people riding their bikes around here, and I would love to come back here (maybe Dad could come…he would like it) and bike around the region and kayak. Back in the caves is where all the (cave) art has been found, though our ancestors didn't actually live in the caves. They lived outside underneath overhanging building shelters underneath the overhangings with timber and such forming rock shelters.
Most of the art is deep inside the cave, though they suspect that there was originally a lot more art on the walls at the entrances of the caves, but these have since eroded or disappeared. These paintings are amazing. Really. Not like what you would like of as "cave art." The depictions of the horses, bison, cows, deer, epix?, and mammoths are so expressive and moving. Really moving. If you had viewed the paintings with light from a flame, some of the pictures would have looked like they were moving. Cool, huh? And those "ole cave men" did that as well as use the natural curves and features of the walls to create an even more 3-dimensional effect. And some of these are some 2-3 meters in length. Most of the bigger paintings, which happen to be in almost complete perfect proportion, were created by an artist who wouldn't have even have been able to see the entire piece at once. The paintings are superimposed on top of one another, adding more to the mystery, expressiveness, and beauty of these paintings. They remind me a lot of modern abstract art.
We went to 4 different cave sites: Fontdegaumme, Rouffignac, Cape Blanc, Lascauex, Peche Merle. In Fontdegaumme, we went back and it was amazing because it was the first one we saw, and the first one when we were first learning to identify all of the different animals. You couldn't take pictures in any of the caves, and it was very limited who all got to go in them. In Rouffignac, the paintings were built into the museum, or rather the museum was built into the cave so that it was very simple, easy to access, and easy to protect. In Cape Blanc, we took a train through the cave in order to the see the paintings in the back of the cave. This cave was over 10 km long. When we were all waiting to go back into the cave, our tour guide went over to the big dark door and opened it into the cave. It was pitch black. And as he opened the door, it made a loud groaning sound and the cold air from the cave rushed in. It was like going into the Haunted Mansion at Disney World or what Mariah called hell. It was so cool though. On the way to the back of the cave, there were tons and tons of scratch marks down the walls and these shallow pits that looked like comfy beds. Well turns out, they were comfy beds. For ancient cave bears!!! The bears would come to the caves to hibernate, and scratch at the walls. Lascauex was not the real deal, but the Disney Lascauex, Lascauex II, as it is called. It was still really neat to see the reproduction, even though it wasn't the real thing. Peche Merle was one of my favorites because it was the most like a cave. It had a lot more prominent cave features. It rivaled Blanchard. What's really interesting about these caves is that most of them are closed to the public to preserve the paintings.
Which raises the question of why should we even preserve them if the public isn't going to see them. Why preserve anything? Most sites have been continuously built up and continued to be used around the world until really the past 50ish years. Sites have become static. Nothing is changing, which is good for preserving what's there, but shouldn't these be continuously evolving, changing, and turning into something better like they did in the past? After all, all of the famous tourist sites we want to go see got that way because of change, innovations, and new ideas, When do we need to stop preserving and start living, changing, adapting? Or when do we need to stop changing and adapting and start preserving? What are we even preserving? And why are we preserving? What do these paintings mean? Do they have meaning for us nowadays? Apparently when Picasso visited Lascauex, he said that he became sad and that we have never invented any new art. It has all been done.
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