Dordogne and Lascaux (v.2)

The most intrepid and fastidious of our readers may remember that we had a spot of car trouble back in October as we left Pau. (No, not the exploding window incident, but the mysterious "blocage.") As a result, we missed our fall trip to the Dordogne region, and we've been really wanting to go ever since. The famous Lascaux cave is there (discovered by four teenagers in 1940, and introduced to Molly and Betsy by Sister Wendy in 2007) and there are several other important archaeological sites nearby, to the point where the Lascaux area is also known as the Valley of the Cro Magnon. Molly finished a long unit on prehistory before the April break, so as it turns out, this springtime trip was well-timed.

According to at least one source, the Dordogne region is the most rural in France. It is certainly very scenic, especially when all decked out in vivid spring green. Sandy took a few pictures. We took some, too.

We stayed in a vacation rental apartment in what must have originally been the carriage house for a little chateau on the banks of the Vézère river. It was our first vacation in a place where we had a kitchen, which meant that we didn't have to organize the day around being able to handle a large restaurant meal either between 12 and 2 or beginning after 7 PM. Woo hoo! We definitely see gites in our future!

Back to Lascaux: the original Lascaux cave was closed to the public in 1963 after the water vapor and carbon dioxide produced by so many visitors began seriously damaging the cave paintings. There is an interesting account of this closing and the reasons for it at the Lascaux website.

Lascaux II is very near the original site, and is a full-size copy of the main section of the original cave, where about 90% of the paintings are. It's amazing. The artists consistently used the shapes of the rocks themselves to emphasize the shape of the animals, with the rock shapes often seeming to have dictated the placements of the animals. Both here and in the other cave that we visited, the artists used techniques for creating depth and perspective which (we were told!) didn't reappear in the art world until the 18th century.

There is even one series of horses all the same color and size, and all in different stages of leaping or running that some people have imagined might have been kind of like an early cartoon, especially in the flickering light of animal-oil lamps. The paintings were done from about waist level up to the ceiling of the caves, where the Cro Magnon would have had to create scaffolding or use extensive ladders. It was really cool (that's vachement chouette to you) which appears to be a meticulously faithful reproduction of (most of) the original, not that we know for sure!