Scientist of the Day - Lascaux Cave
The Hall of the Bulls, Lascaux Cave, Dordogne, France (Wikimedia commons)
Lascaux cave, perhaps the world's most famous repository of prehistoric cave paintings, was discovered on this day, Sep. 12, 1940. The cave lies in the Dordogne region of southwestern France, not too far from sites at La Madeleine and Le Moustier where upper Paleolithic bone carvings had been turning up for nearly 80 years. The cave (really a series of connected caves) was found by four teenage boys, who were looking for a tunnel connecting a castle with a Lascaux estate house. As the boys told the story later, the real finder was a dog named Robot who belonged to one of the lads, and who rooted at a hole revealed by a fallen tree. The boys descended what turned out to be a 50-foot shaft to find themselves in a room whose walls were completely covered with paintings of animals (now known as the Hall of the Bulls). They showed the cave to their schoolteacher, who had some archaeological training, and who made drawings, which he then showed to Abbé Henri Breuil, the most eminent archaeologist in France, who just happened to be nearby at a dig. Breuil knew from the sketches that this was the real deal, and he arrived on Sep. 19 with some colleagues to take a look for himself. He and his companions were blown away.
Map of La Vézère region of the Dordogne; La Madeleine and Le Moustier are near center; Lascaux is at very upper right (donsmaps.com)
Lascaux was not the first cave discovered with prehistoric cave paintings; the cave at Altamira in Spain with its ceiling of charging bulls had been discovered in 1879 (although a much younger Breuil refused to believe those paintings were authentic until 1906). Other cave paintings had been found at Les Combarelles in France in 1901, and at Font de Gaume in 1902. What made Lascaux special were the facts that it had been undisturbed for at least 10,000 years, and it had such a plethora of paintings, some 600 in all, spread out in many different galleries. All the animals hunted by upper Paleolithic humans were there – deer, bears, horses, large cats, rhinos, elk, even a mysterious unicorn (but no reindeer, curiously). Many were beautifully painted. Indeed, when Pablo Picasso saw the Lascaux cave, he said something like: “we have learned nothing in 12,000 years.”
An early tour group at Lascaux, led by Jacques Marsal, one of the boys who discovered the cave on Sep. 12, 1940 (donsmaps.com)
The family that owned the land began offering tours at Lascaux, using at least some of the young discoverers as tour guides (third image). The floor was dug deeper to accommodate the tourists. In 1947, Time Magazine organized the first comprehensive photo shoot of the paintings. Then, in the 1950s, curators began to notice patches of fungus, lichen, and mold growing on the walls and affecting the paintings. The cause was easy to ascertain – thousands of humans were breathing on the paintings every day, depositing moisture, spores, bacteria, and all those other things that humans exude. Efforts to remove the mold and fungi were fruitless, even when the number of visitors was drastically reduced, until finally, in 1963, Lascaux was closed to the public. A replica cave was built not too far from the original to keep the tourists coming, and more replicas have been built, including one that travels. But the original remains closed, as black mold has now appeared, and a new virulent fungus (last image). Some of the wall paintings have completely disappeared, never to be recovered.
The Great Black Bull in the Axial Galley (donsmaps.com)
The so-called “unicorn” (one might say “pregnant unicorn”) in the Hall of the Bulls, Lascaux (donsmaps.com)
Radio-carbon dating of the paintings has not been precise, since there is little carbon to work with, but it is thought that the painting might have begun 22,000 years ago and continued until 17,000 years ago. No one knows the purpose of the cave art, although many conjectures have been offered. Since no one lived in the caves, it is a good guess that Lascaux was a ceremonial site, possibly for rituals to insure hunting success, since everything depicted was also hunted. Whether there was a further religious aspect, we do not know.
Fungus and mold attacking the wall paintings at Lascaux (donsmaps.com)
The best source for images of and information on Lascaux is a website called Don's Maps, which we direct readers to whenever we can. Don Hitchcock offers accurate information, hundreds of photos, including many historic ones, and provides web sources for everything. And there are no ads! What more could you want in a website?
I have never visited Lascaux, nor do I know anyone who has. If any readers have visited one of the replicas, I would love to hear your reaction to the experience.
Bird-headed man (the only depiction of a human at Lascaux) and a disemboweled bison in The Shaft, Lascaux (donsmaps.com)
For discussion of other caves with Paleolithic paintings, see our posts on Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola (who discovered Altamira in 1879) and Chauvet Cave, discovered in 1994.
William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.
