Pre-historic cave paintings: the Grotte de Niaux.

An Alpine Ibex

 

Deep inside an Ariège mountain, about an hour from the Mill, is a cave that I think of as a womb; it is called la Grotte de Niaux. The 800 metre walk from the surface carpark half way up the mountain is through windings of labyrinthine complexity; sometimes wide subterranean river-gouged caverns  (these caves are always found in limestone country, which is a water soluble  rock) sometimes tight passages where you have to be careful not to knock your head. The small group, never more than 25, inevitably talks in hushed tones; to be in such a place elicits a sense of awe.

 

The entrance to the Grotte

You are, of course with a competent guide, often an archaeological student. I have been several times over the years and they are always knowledgeable and engrossed in their subject. They stress, however, that there remain many aspects of the ingress by humans there that will never be completely understood. Niaux, and the other examples of pre-historic cave art, will always hold their secrets. We are, after all, witnessing something many, many thousands of years old

 

Arriving, finally, in a large domed chamber, known as the 'Salon noir', the guide asks everybody to extinguish their lamps. The silence and the darkness are the most profound that I have experienced. You have been positioned by a railing, and when the guide illuminates the side walls of the cave the most wonderful line drawings emerge out of the rock. There was a gasp of astonishment at what we saw there.

.

They are made with black lines, drawn with the assurance and precision that you see with truly great artists. They are of animals, some of which have long disappeared from the modern Ariège countryside. There are bison, horses, ibex, a deer.  There are other representations  in the part of the cave that is currently closed to visitors - a weasel, which is only depicted in Niaux and nowhere else;  and aurochs, a large cattle ancestor which has been extinct since the 17^th century.

 

 

 

In  Niaux, there are no human forms - these are rare in Palaeolithic art. There are, however, many geometric forms, some in a red pigment: a series of dots, a vertical stick with a loop to one side called a claviform,  and a barbed sign possibly representing an arrow.

This symbol is found throughout Niaux

 

The meanings of these signs are obscure; perhaps they are coded messages for others to read.  However there are over 500 human footprints in the currently inaccessible part of the cave, waiting for sufficient funds to become available for a thorough scientific study.

 

You are looking at paintings 13 or 14 thousand years old, drawn by Magdalenian homo sapiens people, our direct ancestors, and now known to have been created over nearly a thousand years of different visits to these caves. Other caves containing Parietal (wall) art, such as the Chauvet caves in the Ardèche, are much older, a staggering 33,000 years before the present. It is impossible for the public to visit Chauvet as it is considered necessary to preserve it in pristine condition, but a facsimile – apparently good -  has been constructed. 

 

Sometimes the artists used the form of the rock to suggest the natural  shape of the animal, the curve of a bison’s belly for instance. Some are staggering in the life force that emerges from the rock, others are not so well drawn. Oddly, sometimes they are superimposed one upon another, and the scale varies widely.

 

The only weasel found in paleolithic art

Obviously the animals depicted were amongst prey species for the people who painted them, some of the flanks seem to be pierced by spears, and parallels with other hunter gatherer people's practices show that an intense identification with the animals is considered  a necessary preparation for success in this difficult and dangerous pursuit  of  high-value food. However it is interesting to note, however, that the animals depicted were not the usual prey for these people, which is known to have been reindeer. The question remains why it was considered necessary to travel so deeply into the cave system to make these drawings. Clearly more was going on than just a preparation for a hunt. 

Bison

 

 

I have asked myself what are the reasons behind such an undertaking. There is, perhaps, a clue in the feelings that I experience when I finally emerge into the normality of daylight, warmth and the expanse of the surface world. There was a sense of relief, as if a trial has been successfully passed through. Perhaps this hints that there was an element of an initiation rite for the people that undertook the hazardous journey into the deep mountain, without all the security of modern lighting methods which can be relied on to last the time that a visit takes.

 

The only stag in the Grotte

These people were totally immersed in Nature, and it is now generally recognised that there is a shamanistic element in similar practices that anthropologists have encountered in other tribal cultures. The danger that had to be confronted by the shaman and his acolytes, the submersion in the deepest bowels of mother earth for what must have been considerable lengths of time are all factors that contribute to the intensity of their experience and may lead to altered states of awareness.

 

Thus I can well imagine the anxiety, if not terror, that a young person would have to confront if left alone with a spluttering torch with no reliable memory of how to find their way back to the surface and the comfort of their family.

 

Throughout many cultures initiation was an important step often undertaken as a doorway into adulthood, and indeed some tribal people still maintain these rites to this day, despite disapproval from governing authorities - they can be very dangerous. 

 

There can be little doubt that these  caves represented a  sanctuary to the people that penetrated them in the deep past. Carbon dating of the various pigments used for the paintings has shown that this was a practice that continued for nearly a thousand years, from 13,850 years ago until 12,890, perhaps not continuously but certainly in two distinct phases. There was, therefore, a memory that lasted many generations and a cultural intention to access this difficult place which was not in the slightest way casual.

So what was being born in these and other deep caverns so many years ago? They have been called the 'Dawn of Art'; Picasso himself visited Altamira or Lascaux and emerged saying "we have invented nothing, pointillism, cubism, the ancient artists knew it all" and declared "none of us can paint like this". But for the brave men and women who were actually there we will never know, but can just look and wonder.

 All photos thanks  to the Sites Touristiques de l'Ariège