PICASSO HAD NOTHING WITTY OR SELF-DEPRECATING to say about the prehistoric cave paintings at Caverne Pont d’Arc as he did with Lascaux and Alta Mira. He had been dead, after all, for more than 20 years when they were re-discovered by spelunkers in 1994.
Not much on the outside
Archeologists, it seems, have learned their lesson from Peche Merle and Lascaux; prehistoric art and human visitation don’t go together well. The cave at Pont d’Arc (or Chauvet, if you’d rather) has never been — will never be — open to the public. The site is just too valuable and too fragile. Instead, like with Lascaux and Alta Mira, visitors see a replica of the cave complete with cave bear skulls and bones, human footprints and, of course, faithful representations of 425 cave drawings representing fourteen different species of animals.
Palm print Flint etching
Charcoal drawing
The art itself includes prehistoric pointillist ochre “palm print” animals, flint engravings and elaborate charcoal drawings carbon-dated to 36,000 years ago. One section, the Lion Panel, is 16 meters long and contains 94 animals. Some appear to be running, others snorting while four wooly rhinos stand side-by-side in perfect perspective, a technique not seen again until the Renaissance.
Putting things in perspective
The modern reconstruction of the cave is no less amazing, like the statues at Abu Simbel in Egypt. We have been in many caves as both tourists and spelunkers and can report that except for the faint scent of curing concrete, Pont d’Arc looks like the real deal complete with rock falls, sinkholes and translucent calcite stalactites and stalagmites. The recreation took two and a half years and required 16 million laser data points.
Exit through the gift shop for cave bears and wooly mammoths
At 36,000 years the artwork is the oldest yet discovered. And Pont d’Arc, opened only this past April, is the newest World Heritage Site for prehistoric art. I wonder what Pablo would have said to that.
BTW, all of my photos are thrice removed as it were — photos from books of photos of the replica of the caverne.