10. Inside Lascaux 4.

My wife and I were in :ascaux 4 recently and overawed by it. I found that hard to co nvery in the form of fistion.

STELLA‘S AUTUMN

10. Inside Lascaux 4.

It was breakfast on their first full day in the Dordogne region of France. Both Stella and Percival had slept well on a comfortable bed. She woke up first, and smiled at his head as he breathed in and out with a comforting regular rhythm.

“Are you awake?” she grunted into his ear.

He tossed slightly, moaned, tossed again, then said “what is it, babe?”

“The caves you spoke of. What do you know about them? And what makes them so special?” she asked.

“At Lascaux,” he replied, and yawned, “Lascaux 4, to be precise. They’re famous in the world of archaeology.”

“Then you’d better tell me what you know about them! I’d never heard of them until you mentioned them the other day, and I’ve had eighty-two years of listening. Is it just a ruse to get me alone with you in a foreign land that’s famous for its romance and such.”

Percival looked hurt as if he had thought of no such thing. “I saw a television programme ages ago,” he said, “and it got me fascinated, so I read up on it.”

“And it found a home in some of your sermons?” she asked, teasingly.

“Not at all. Look, let’s get up and grab some breakfast before we’re off on our adventures.” He glanced at his watch. “Bill said we’d be off in about an hour, and I hope you don’t mind if I’m a bit obsessed by ancient history.”

“Ancient, like an old woman, eh?Come on the, get your shorts on and we’ll see what they’ve got us for breakfast, then.” she grinned, watching him struggle into a pair of shorts she was sure were two sizes too small for him.

Breakfast was in the dining room and it was first class and plentiful. All Stella wanted was a dish of yoghurt and a couple of delicious croissants with apricot jam whilst Percy helped himself to toast, cold meats as well as some scrambled egg.

“Righto,” she said when he was finishing his coffee, “tell me about this cave and what’s special about it.

“Excuse me if I get anything wrong because my memory’s got more holes in it than a sieve, but a teenager, in 1940 I think it was, whilst out walking his dog out of the blue he found a way into the cave system at Lascaux by accident, and saw a huge collection of art works that were obviously ancient. When word got around it became a popular site for visitors until thousands of people visiting and breathing caused it to start to deteriorate, and in order to preserve it an exact copy of it was created and the original sealed off. The one we’re going to see is known as Lascaux Four and although it’s really comparatively new, to all intents and purposes itis the original: they used same materials and created an exact copy.”

“Sounds interesting. 1940, you say… it didn’t get bombed during the war then?”

“Certainly not! That would be a crime against so many things I hate to think about it! The pictures were originally created around seventeen thousand years ago and are examples of very early human art. If we’re bright enough we can work out what was important to early man, his beliefs, philosophies, that sort of thing.”

“And what he dressed in… is there evidence of fashion in the cave paintings?” she asked in all seriousness, “or if he dressed at all?”

“Oh, he’d have dressed in something if it got cold, though I’ve no idea what. By remembering images I’ve seen of the caves the simple od drawing of a human figure doesn’t indicate whether it’s male or female, or even if any clothes of any description are involved. Remember this is a group of human beings living around seventeen thousand years ago, and therefore a long time after Lucy.”

“And who in the name of goodness is or was Lucy? An old girlfriend you’ve kept quiet about?”

“An early version of you, darling babe,” he said with a grin, “Lucy is a collection of very old bones estimated to be more than three million yearrs old. A great deal older, then, than our Lascaux artists, but an early hominid on the way to beng human.”

“Did you call me darling and babe in the same sentence? Percival, I’m eighty-two, for goodness sake!”

“I do remember that, babe, but it’s time we went back to the coach. It’s off to Lascaux. Come on!”

“Coming, boss,” she grinned, and they made their way to the coach, going via their own room where they picked up a few things they thought they might need.

There was a fairly long walk from where the coach parked to the entrance of Lascaux Four. They were met by their guide, a young man who made Stella wish she was sixty years younger, and he introduced himself in pretty decent English, repeating quite a lot of the things that Percy had already told her. Then they were shown a short video illustrating how a teenage boy had discovered the caves.

“But what you’re going to see is not the same,” the guide explained, “it’s an exact replica. The original caves are being restored and preserved. Now please follow me.”

What followed was a tour in the near dark, and yet the artwork purporting to represent some created seventeen thousand years in the past was clearly visible.

There were many pictures, most of them shoiwng quite clearly images of animals that the two of them had little difficulty in identifying, though there were others that may well have been created by their artist as fantasy creatures. Stella was captivated when she considered the very age of the images that had been precisely copied for the benefit of both tourists and students of prehistory..

“What you must understand,” said their guide, “that the people living in this neighbourhood seventeen thousand years ago didn’t live in these caves. They had dwellings more suitable for human occupation.”

“I used to think I might be a bit of an artist one day. But these… I’ve never have been able to draw anything like these,” whispered Stella, and she pointed to pictures of several bison, “they are beyond me.”

“And horses,” breathed Percival, “they’re genuine works of art. And to think that the man or woman who created them lived around 17,000 years ago. Died 15,000 years before Christ. I mean, it’s a long time ago,”

Their guide took them through several other caves and passages, until they finally emerged back into the light of a twenty-first century day.

Stella looked back and shook her head.

“Well,” she said, “didn’t someone once calculate the age of the Earth by reading the Bible and working through the ancient kings until he eventually arrived at a number of years that he claimed was the age of the Earth?”

“Ussher I believe you’re talking about and, yes, using his calculations it’s 6,000 years or so since Adam appeared on Earth in the company of his lovely Eve. But not many people believe that now, not when you can find fossils of living beings that are millions of years old,” he told her.

“I see,” she said, smiling at him as they slowly made their way back to their coach. “It’d all very convenient, isn’t it, if you wear a dog collar?”

“What is?” he asked, knowing what she was going to say.

“You must have wondered, Percy,” she teased, “how easily you drop one theory when another proves it wrong, but never drop your god…”

© Peter Rogerson, 11.07.23