Musee National De Prehistoire

We drove on to Les Eyzies-de-Tayac and its nice 5 euro camping aire, right on the Vezere, and set forth walking the few hundred meters to the National Museum of Prehistory. Les Eyzies is sort of the epicenter of the cave art world around here. The Grotte de Font de Gaume, the last of the polychrome caves open to the public, is just a few more hundred meters down the road. A bit to our surprise, there was no admission fee at  the museum, since it was first Sunday of the month. (We are not always fully aware what day it is). There's another great museum of prehistory near Paris, which we saw in 1989 and will probably see again this month or in the fall, but it deals largely with neolithic culture. As I recall. The museum in Les Eyzies covers all of the paleolithic, from Africa to France right up to the neolithic, but mostly the Magdalenian, which is mostly what one finds here. The Magdalenian culture existed from Portugal to Poland encompassing roughly 11,000-17,000BC. It is named for a rock shelter, La Madeline, near here on the Vezere.

The renovated museum (2004) is built in to the overhangs overlooking Les Eyzies

Entrance

There is a staggering array of stones and bones; rows and cases of them, very
well displayed; displays are in French but there are useful English hand-outs
throughout; English-type personnes probably are not that much into the details;
oui?

Some very realistic dioramas; here a paleo-toddler gets
instruction on who's the boss of you

Cast of a wooly rhinoceros found in the area; yes, there were also saber-toothed
tigers, wooly mammoths, and giant reindeer

Perhaps best were the many video presentations of paleolithic technology,
tool and weapon-making, also art of the era; here, paint-mixing 101

Here, my favorite, the carving of a Willendorf-style Venus, using only stone and
bone tools; I have always felt that Rubens was heavily influenced by Magdalenian
art

Examples and demonstration of use of the atl-atl

Scores of tiny shells for necklace use

Dressy Magdalenian sea-shell cap and vest

The Magdalenians were into portable art, stuff you could
carry around with you

One of the most famous instances (apart from all the Venuses); there is nothing
unsophisticated nor crude about their art; as Picasso said after touring Lascaux,
"we have learned nothing"

Stone implement found at Lascaux

Most of their representations are of animals; apart from the hundreds of hands-
in-negative, there are almost no human representations; here's one, arguably, of
the sun; understandably, people who lived in the Ice Age might develop a certain
fondness for the sun...

A much larger relief of aurochs...

Out on the terrace; it's surprising to me that the Museum would
have chosen a Neanderthal figure to be its emblem--the locals,
that is, the Magdalenians, were Cro Magnons and
indistinguishable  from you and me--but I can go with the
program