The mysterious and magnificent cave paintings at Lascaux in the Dordogne region of France have been closed to the public - and even to most scholars - since the 1960s on the orders of the then French Minister for Culture, Andre Malraux. The images of oxen, horses, stags and goats, created 17,000 years ago by Cro-Magnon people, and discovered only in 1940, were being damaged by the breath from more than 1,000 visitors a day. The increase in carbon dioxide was causing the build-up of a white substance which, when removed, brought some of the paint with it. Malraux, a man more interested in culture than in commercial tourism, rightly closed the caves to all but those with the most pressing scholarly need to view them.
Building replica
Seemingly, however, there were those who did not believe they were closed and every day people would turn up at the nearby town of Montignac to see the paintings. The authorities decided to build a replica in a nearby quarry. Thousands of tonnes of concrete, steel girders and chicken-wire were needed to simulate just a fraction of the cave system. Artists were employed to paint the animals and other objects using the same techniques as the prehistoric artists. French television filmed every centimetre of the original so that every bump and depression in the walls and roof of the new cave would be exactly the same as the original.
Today, hundreds queue daily during the summer to buy tickets to see the fake. It is as if the Mona Lisa were removed from the Louvre and a forgery put in its place, or the Van Goghs were removed from the walls of his museum in Amsterdam and replaced by copies.
The fake Lascaux, known as Lascaux II, is incredibly well done. It feels like a real cave and the exuberance of the animals, the colour and the liveliness has been caught. You see how the primitive painters understood perspective, something much later artists had trouble with. The entrance is set among the trees and there is a relative lack of commercial activity - just one little shop selling some postcards, a few books and T-shirts.
What is sometimes disappointing are the guides. They make you feel you are there to admire the paintings as you might a Vermeer or a Picasso. You are meant to marvel as the guide speculates as to how they might have been painted. There is little social or cultural context. Little or nothing about the lives of the people who painted the pictures. We are, however, told a lot about the theories as to why they were painted, which are all based on hunting magic and possible religious significance.
Frieze of horses
Lascaux is the most spectacular of the caves in the area, but far from the only one. At Cap-Blanc, only a few miles from Lascaux, was found a remarkable bas-relief carving of bison and a frieze of horses. Unlike at Lascaux, there is evidence that people lived within the overhang that protects the sculptures. This is not a portrait of individual animals, but of a herd. The artists knew how to compose and how to show movement; and at the bottom is what looks like a carving of a hand, which the guide suggested might have been the artist signing his or her work.
In high summer it can be difficult to get access to some of the caves. Only small groups are brought around at a time and booking must be done well in advance. It was because we could not get into Font de Gaume that we found the delightful small cave of Berifals. It was found in 1902 by the pre-historian Denis Payrony. Access is through a wood, up a rough path, and then through a green metal door. An elderly man with a powerful lamp acts as guide. You have to look hard; then, gradually you see small paintings, with incredible detail, some hidden away up narrow passages. Sometimes you wonder if some sort of auto-suggestion is at work as the guide points out a leg, a back and then a head of an animal. You wonder what he is talking about, then the lamp moves and the shadows change and there it is - a wonderful, detailed horse, or bison, with finely delineated eyes and mouth, just looking at you. Often the artists have used the natural shapes of the rock as part of an animal. There is a lot of tourist guff surrounding the cave paintings, though not at the caves themselves. Some guidebooks talk of prehistoric man choosing to live in the Dordogne because of its beauty and climate, as if he arrived seeking truffles and foie gras. The Dordogne, 17,000 to 20,000 years ago, was like Scandinavia.
Cro-Magnon man
Cro-Magnon man is so often represented as being bent over, with a low forehead and protruding jaw. He was not. He was upright and looked like modern man. In the otherwise highly touristic town of Les Eyzies is the wonderful National Prehistoric Museum. Here is the context that it so badly missing from the caves themselves. Here are the material remains, the evidence of industry, economy and culture. When you see this you start asking questions, rather than just being surprised at how clever early man could be. It is then you start to wonder why people feel the need to produce art, about how we define primitivism.
Maybe the cave paintings had nothing to do with magic or religion. Maybe our ancestors just liked painting. Maybe they simply enjoyed representing their world and looking at what they had made.