An exceptional image of the lower body of a woman was found associated with a bison figure. Many images of large red dots are, indeed, partial handprints made with the palm of the hand. Red hand stencils and complete handprints have also been discovered. Thirty radiocarbon datings made in the cave have shown that it was frequented at two different periods.
Most of the images were drawn during the first period, between 30, and 32, BP in radiocarbon years. Some people came back between 25, to 27, and left torch marks and charcoal on the ground. Some human footprints belonging to a child may date back to the second period.
Clottes, Jean. Visiting The Met? He perceived parallels between the images that shamans see when hallucinating—geometric patterns, religious imagery, wild animals and monsters—and the images adorning Chauvet, Lascaux and other caves. It was not surprising, says Clottes, that these early artists made the conscious choice to embellish their walls with wild animals, while almost entirely ignoring human beings.
For Paleolithic man, animals dominated their environment, and served as sources of both sustenance and terror. It was a world of very few people living in a world of animals. You do it because you need their help.
It is a fact. In the years since his theory of a prehistoric vision quest first stirred debate, Clottes has been challenged on other fronts. Archaeologists have insisted that the samples used to date the Chauvet paintings must have been contaminated, because no other artworks from that period have approached that level of sophistication.
But arguments for the accuracy of the dating got a boost four years ago, when Jean-Marc Elalouf at the Institute of Biology and Technology in Saclay, France, conducted DNA studies and radiocarbon dating of the remains of cave bears Ursus spelaeus that ventured inside the grotto to hibernate during the long ice age winters.
Elalouf determined that the cave bear skeletal remains were between 37, and 29, years old. Humans and bears entered the cave on a regular basis—though never together—before the rock fall. They have mapped every square inch with advanced 3-D technology, counted the bones of cave bears and inventoried the animal images, identifying nine species of carnivores and five species of ungulates.
They have documented the pigments used—including charcoal and unhydrated hematite, a natural earth pigment otherwise known as red ocher. They have uncovered and identified the tools the cave artists employed, including brushes made from horse hair, swabs, flint points and lumps of iron oxides dug out of the ground that could be molded into a kind of hand-held, Paleolithic crayon.
They have used geological analysis and a laser-based remote sensing technology to visualize the collapse of limestone slabs that sealed access to Chauvet Cave until its rediscovery. One recent study, co-directed by Clottes, analyzed the faint traces left by human fingers on a decorated panel in the End Chamber. The fingers were pressed against the wall and moved vertically or horizontally against the soft limestone before the painter drew images of a lion, rhinoceros, bison and bear.
Prehistorian Norbert Aujoulat studied a single painting, Panel of the Panther , identified the tools used to create the masterwork and found other images throughout the cave that were produced employing the same techniques. Geneste co-authored a study that analyzed a mysterious assemblage of limestone blocks and stalagmites in a side alcove. His team concluded that Paleolithic men had arranged some of the blocks, perhaps in the process of opening a conduit to paintings in other chambers, perhaps for deeper symbolic reasons.
Geneste has also paid special attention to depictions of lions, symbols of power accorded a higher status than other mammals. They are painted completely differently from other animals in Chauvet. I feared that a facsimile would reduce the miracle of Chauvet to a Disneyland or Madame Tussaud-style theme park—a tawdry, commercialized experience. But my hopes began to rise as we followed a winding pathway flanked by pines, offering vistas of forested hills at every turn.
At the entrance to the recreated cave, a dark passage, the air was moist and cool—the temperature maintained at The rough, sloping rock faces, streaked with orange mineral deposits, and multi-spired stalactites hanging from the ceiling, felt startlingly authentic, as did the reproduced bear skulls, femurs and teeth littering the earthen floors.
The paintings were copied using the austere palette of Paoleolithic artists, traced on surfaces that reproduced, bump for bump, groove for groove, the limestone canvas used by ancient painters. The exactitude owed much to the participation of some of the most preeminent prehistoric cave experts in France, including Clottes and Geneste.
The team painstakingly mapped every square inch of the real Chauvet by using 3-D models, then shrinking the projected surface area from 8, to 3, square meters. Architects suspended a frame of welded metal rods—shaped to digital coordinates provided by the 3-D model—from the roof of the concrete shell.
They layered mortar over the metal cage to re-create the limestone inside Chauvet. Artists then applied pigments with brushes, mimicking the earth tones of the cave walls, based on studies conducted by geomorphologists at the University of Savoie in Chambery. Artists working in plastics created crystal formations and animal bones.
Twenty-seven panels were painted on synthetic resin in studios in both Montignac, in the Dordogne; and in Toulouse. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Kris Hirst. Archaeology Expert. Kris Hirst is an archaeologist with 30 years of field experience. Her work has appeared in scholarly publications such as Archaeology Online and Science. Twitter Twitter. Updated October 23, Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Hirst, K. Chauvet Cave. Top 10 Inventions in Ancient Human History.
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