Grotte Chauvet -- Discovery of a 35,000-Year-Old Cave

 

  

Imagine putting together a time capsule and having it discovered 35,000 years later. What would the items inside say about you and your life, your culture and society? 

 

That is what researchers have been trying to learn about the Aurignacians, a hunter-gatherer culture that lived 36,000 to 12,000 years ago in southeastern France by studying their artwork left on cave walls. Three French speleogists (cave explorers) discovered one of their caves on December 18, 1994. Known as the Grotte Chauvet, it is the site of the earliest-known Paleolithic artworks going back 35,000 years.

Jean-Marie Chauvet is from the Cévennes Region, He is an explorer and an expert in speleological diving, a dangerous discipline. As a photographer and filmmaker, he took an active part in sharing speleological knowledge.

 

Christian Hillaire fell in love with speleology while still a teenager. In 1985, he took part in the discovery of the grotte des Deux-Ouvertures, an exceptional archaeological site in Ardèche classified as Historical Monument. He met Eliette Brunel that same year.

 

Eliette Brunel is a native of Saint-Remèze (Ardèche), right along the Ardèche Gorges. Passionate about speleology, she has discovered a hundred of archaelogical sites in Ardèche.

 

 

Grotte Chauvet is located in the Department of Ardèche in southeastern France, 75 miles and about 2 hours southeast of Le Puy-en-Velay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grotte Chauvet is on a cliff. The entrance to the cave was blocked 20,000 years ago by a cliff collapse. This helped to preserve the cave until it was discovered by the three French speleogists.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cave is near the Vallon-Pont-d'Arc along the Ardèche River. The Aurignacians tended to designate such caves near prominent topographical markers like this arched bridge.

 

Entrance to the cave is not open to the public, and it is highly restricted to authorized persons only. Researchers enter the cave only at certain times of the year for only a couple hours at a time because toxic gases poison the cave's air supply.

 

A replica of the cave has been made for the public. Click here to learn more about the replica.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Aurignacians were a hunter-gatherer culture that lived during the glacial period in the southwestern Europe between 36,000 to 12,000 years ago. They include the caves at Chauvet (36,000 years ago), Lascaux (21,000 years ago), Altamira in northwestern Spain (20,000 years ago). 

 

The Aurignacians appear to exhibit one of the first mythological and religious systems that expresses their conception of the world through art. Their dark and silent caves were located apart from living areas and they contain both the people’s imaginations and sacred myths in the form of wall drawings and paintings, sculpted objects, geometric shapes, signs, and bone collections. Animals are depicted almost exclusively with only an occasional and partial representation of humans. When they do occur, they are mixed in with the animals like a man with a bird’s head (Lascaux) or a women’s lower body overlaid on a bison’s torso and the head of a lioness. Plants were not included in this menagerie of drawings. Click here to learn more about the art of the caves.  

 

The cave drawings were made with charcoal, torch marks, and red ochre. Through carbon dating analysis, scientists have determined the the first and most numerous cave paintings at Grotte Chauvet were done 35,000-36,000 years ago and the second 29,999 to 30,000 years ago.  

 

 

Upon seeing the "first message of our ancestors" in the cave, Eliette, the sole woman explorer said: "They were here."

 

 

 

 

Click on to this  VIDEO  to learn more about the Grotte Chauvet discovery. It is in French, but you don't have to understand the language in order to witness the speleologists' reactions. 

To enter this video, which was produced by Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (2015), touch the screen with your cursor and click on the arrow at the bottom of your screen. Then click on to the box on the right that says "Vidéo -- 18 décembre 1994".

 

Famed German film director, screenwriter, and actor Werner Herzog produced the first and one of the few films on the cave in April 2011 entitled Cave of Forgotten Dreams. It is available for sale or rental on Amazon but here is a 2:30-minute preview.

Here's a 6-minute review of the film by Scientific American, which includes an interview with Herzog.

Here are 7 minutes of excerpts from the film.

Other Sources

Claude Pommereau, ed. Grotte Chauvet 2--Ardèche. Beaux Arts and Cie Éditions, Paris.