Comment allez-vous ? and Jak się masz dzisiaj?

June 8: Still around Castelnaud La Chapelle

After last night’s huge and rich dinner, we decided a walk to the village and back (with the compulsory cup of coffee in between) was a necessary excursion.

You can see our house sitting on the top of the ridge.

Then we drove to Les Eyzies which claims to be the global centre of prehistoric research and discovery because it sits at the heart of one of the richest prehistoric landscapes on Earth.

It has an extraordinary concentration of prehistoric sites (more than 150) and about 25 decorated caves

We asked AI (Claude) whether Les Eyzies’ claim to be the global centre for prehistoric research was a bit Euro-centric focussed. Claude agreed that this was a fair and important challenge because Australia has an extremely strong claim that often gets overlooked in Western-centric accounts of prehistory. In fact, any truly global account of prehistoric research has to place Australia front and centre, Claude said!!!!

Anyway, Les Eyzies is the town where Font de Gaume is located.

Font de Gaume is one of the most important prehistoric cave sites in France. It is famous for its Ice Age wall paintings, and it’s part of a wider group of prehistoric sites that are listed as a UNESCO world heritage site. 

It is one of the last “real” painted caves you can still visit – it’s the last cave in France with original multi coloured paintings that are still open to the public. Many famous caves like Lascaux are now closed or only shown as replicas.

Numbers able to visit the cave are extremely limited…no more than 80 each day, and you aren’t allowed to take photos inside….this was the best I could do…it shows the cave entrance.

Only a portion of the paintings can be seen during a tour. This is all to protect the cave from damage (like carbon dioxide from breath, which has harmed other caves).The cave contains over 200-230 painted and engraved figures. They mostly depict animals such as Bison (dominant); Horses; Mammoths; Reindeer and others. To give you a sense of what we saw, I’ve cheated with postcard shots

The paintings date back to around 17,000 BC.

The guide told us about a 500 kg cave bear being found in the cave (how he managed to move through some very narrow tunnels is beyond me). Just in case you didn’t know this, the cave bear species died out at the end of the Ice Age. At the Natural Museum of Prehistory, which we visited in the afternoon, we saw a replica of the cave bear.

There were also some interesting replicas of prehistoric humans and animals.

Dinner at home overlooking the valley !!!