“We then wed our lithofacies analysis with systematic detrital zircon sampling to assess the role depositional environments play on detrital zircon provenance trends in a well-documented progradational succession of slope, shelf, and onshore deposits.”
- Stephen C. Dobbs, PhD Candidate, Stanford University
“These Cro-Magnon people were identical to us: they had the same physique, the same brain, the same looks. And, unlike all previous hominids who roamed the earth, they could choke on food. That may seem a trifling point, but the slight evolutionary change that pushed man's larynx deeper into his throat, and thus made choking a possibility, also brought with it the possibility of sophisticated, well articulated speech…..the descended larynx explains why you can speak and your dog cannot.”
- Bill Bryson
June 22-23, 2022
On a pleasant day in early September, 1940 in Southern France 18 year old Marcel Ravidat was hiking with his dog “Robot”. Robot was a hound dog and like many of his breed, when his nose catches wind of something he will take off ahead at great speed. Marcel could hear him barking but could not see him on the hill they were climbing.
He soon discovered that Robot appeared to have fallen into a crevice in the earth leading to a cave below. Marcel returned with three of his friends. He wanted to rescue his dog, but he was also excited. There was a chateau near by and there was a rumor in the village below that underneath the fading grand facade were tunnels filled with treasure.
They carefully lowered themselves through the hole and down the rock strewn debris field. There was no gold.
They did, however, find treasure of another kind.
They stumbled upon Lascaux Cavern. With their flickering light they found on the walls an extraordinary tableaux of prehistoric art. They ran to the village and soon experts descended into the cave and the findings were confirmed.
Here was a treasure of incalculable worth. It shined a light into the past some 20,000 years BC in the past into the world of Cro-Magnon man.
Cro-Magnon man was so named because of the location where the first skeletons were found. Most scientists today have abandoned this term. Through detailed study we now know that Cro-Magnon man belongs to the family of Homo Sapiens. That is the same family we belong to as well. They are our direct ancestors. They were a people group known as the Magdalenians.
Unlike Hollywood depictions, they were not “Cave Men”. They did not live in caves but they did enter them. The reason they did not live in caves was simple enough. There was no light in the caves, fires would be toxic in there, and, most importantly, serious predators linhabited the caverns.
The Magdalenians where nomadic hunters whose diet was almost exclusively Reindeer which populated the permafrost by the thousands. it was the end of the ice age and winters were long and brutal. They lived, much as indigenous people in the Americas lived with animal skin tents and clothes. Through DNA studies we know they were slightly taller than us and more muscular on average. There skin ranged from deep tan to white.
And they had blue eyes.
Their civilization lasted 8,000 years! For perspective, Rome was 1000 years and our country is only 300 years old.
So why did they go deep into these caves and paint animals? No one knows for sure, but there are some good theories. In order to accomplish what they did they would need paints made from organic material, light, made of animal fat candles, scaffolding and more. This was not some idle prank. Considered effort and some danger was involved in the making of this art.
None of the painting are of Reindeer, there main food source.
Many of the works are are highly detailed and almost reverential in composition. It is suspected, much like our places of worship today, that these images formed a complex shrine for them. We have no Rosetta Stone to back up the interpretation so much of this is an educated guess.
You will note on some of the images, the artists used perspective to give the illusion of depth. This concept would be lost to humanity and would not be seen in art again until the Italian Renaissance - some 19,000 years later!
Walking in the caves with our lights looking up at these treasures felt like we were viewing something private and personal. The care taken with some of the works clearly was reverential.
It made me realize that I had the same feeling walking into some of the great houses of worship here in Europe. In this moment of intimacy I was able to reach back to the dawn of man and feel their presence. These people were not some monstrous myth of Hollywood. They were searching beyond their harsh world for something more. Humans never stop doing that across every civilization.
I realized, this is us.
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