Lascaux Painting

admin — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 23:33:23 +0000

For more than 17 000 years, the bestiary of the Lascaux cave in southwestern France has survived the ravages of human history. Anyone entering this time capsule is confronted by four metre long bulls that appear to float across the massive vaults like religious apparitions. An enigmatic spotted beast with a round snout and straight, forward-pointing horns, plump horses in brilliant yellow and deer with treelike antlers-all seem in equal part intimates of the present and missives from some distant world. Which they are. Though the draftsmanship is strikingly Modernist – on exiting the cave in 1940, Pablo Picasso said, “We have invented nothing” – these creatures were painted and inscribed on the limestone walls during the Upper Paleolithic age, when everyone was a hunter-gatherer, and Homo sapiens coexisted with Neanderthal man.

Cap Blanc Horse

admin — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:36:52 +0000

Discovered in 1909 by a team of potholers, the Cave of Cap Blanc contains a unique collection of friezes sculptured in the cave walls. As in Lascaux, Cro-Magnon man had often painted or engraved walls, but here life size forms of horses and bison make the site totally unique, and as a result it has been classified by UNESCO and entered on the list of Human World Heritage sites.

This Rock Sculpture and lots more can be explored on Walking Dordogne’s “Cro Magnon, Romans and Templars” tour

The Vezere Valley» Vezere Valley

Lascaux Painting

Cap Blanc Horse