chauvet cave

"In the middle of this chamber is the Altar on which is placed a Bear skull. On the floor around the Altar are 36 other Bear skulls. Obviously they had not all died in this one chamber, but must have been collected from around the Chauvet Cave, or perhaps came from outside kills. For me this was a place where people gathered for some really important ceremony connected with the Bears. I began to get a picture in my mind of the social life of the Clan.

The Altar is roughly two foot square on top and two foot high. I squatted down in front of the skull and looked into the eye sockets. With the aid of my pocket torch I could see the surface of the rock beneath the skull. 

It was covered with tiny lumps of charcoal and grains of fallen calcite, which were exactly similar to the surface not covered by the skull. A human must have put the skull there. Jean took one of these small pieces of carbon to have it dated. The carbon was 35,000 years old.

On the other side of the barrier is the last small chamber that makes up this arm of the Chauvet Cave. On the sunken floor of pink calcite, against the side of the chamber, is a small catchment basin of crystal clear water. The surface of the pool glinted in the light of our helmet lights. All around me was sparkling beauty. I felt that I was in a small chapel built to house a Font of Holy Water. We lay on the floor to study the faint cave paintings on the ceiling of the chamber. It was a magic moment of peace and serenity.

Had the artists come here to get the water needed to mix with their red and black paints? Or had they had a young apprentice artist with them that they sent to fetch the water? The question can be asked because on the way back Jean showed me the oldest Homo sapiens footprint ever yet discovered. Firmly impressed into the soft grey clay is the left footprint of an 8 year old boy. Scientists can tell the sex and age from the size and shape of the impression. I bent down and held my hand over the footprint. This particular Robinson Crusoe was enthralled by this 27,000 year old boy Friday. The imprint of the big toe is precisely like all the big toes of the hundred or so children that I have sculpted over the last 30 years. His second toe was longer than the big toe, giving him what sculptors call a Grecian foot, which in Athenian times was always thought to be a sign of good breeding."