The Road Goes Ever On

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Rouffingnac Cave

After Font de Gaume we drove across more interesting Dordogne countryside to the cave near Rouffingnac. The art is middle Magdelenian, maybe 15,000 years old, and is strictly engravings and black drawings. No polychrome. But it is an incredible collection, more than 200 animal depictions, 65 on the ceiling of one room alone, and more wooly mammoths than anything else. Again, something to behold. The cave itself is one of the largest, 8-10 km in length, but it is a dead cave--no running water--and so transportation to the art sites, a kilometer or more, is on a rickety little very narrow gauge electric train. The presentation is entirely in French although you can rent (1.5 euro) a smart-phone device that has English descriptions and pix. Rouffingnac was a major home for cave bears, when there were such things in Europe, and there is ample evidence of their habitation. The rock itself is a mixture of the remaining limestone, clay, and huge nodules of flint. On the whole, we thought Rouffingnac more impressive than Font de Gaume, perhaps because of the overwhelming number of depictions.

The entrance to Rouffingnac is far more promising than
Font de Gaume...you actually walk into the huge cave

And there are the ticket office, gift shoppe, waiting area,
displays, exhibits

Again, it's no fotos, so all I have is grabbed from
the web...

Thus; the aspect that is really impressive is the
sheer number of depictions, many in large
groups; there aren't any pix I can find that do
justice to Rouffingnac; alas

Flint nodules

Well satisfied with our two-cave day, we drove on through
the Perigord; above, mammoth, reindeer and bison at a town
roundabout

Through fields of rapeseed, and stopped at the aire in Nieul,
between Limoges and Poitiers

Playground/camping aire at Nieul

Grotte De Font De Gaume

Next morning we got out to the Grotte de Font de Gaume by 8:30 to stand in line, in the cold, me, by myself, for tickets for the 11AM English tour. As with other real caves, they only allow a small number of people in at a time, with a guide, under strict control, only a few groups a day. By 9:45 I had the tickets and by 11 we were in the cave. As I observed elsewhere, this is the last of the polychrome caves open to the public--you can see replicas of Lascaux and Alta Mira (we have)--but this is the last one standing, so far known. There is a strict no fotos policies, and so all I have below are off the web. But it is a sight to see...15,000 years old, give or take. Mostly bison, but others too. In poses facing each other. Wonderful.

You'd think a World Heritage Site could get a new coat of
paint every decade or so

The terrain

Entrance

Self-portraits at the entrance, dressed for the
chilly interior

Bison

Reindeer, horse

More bison, maybe an ibex; the guide thought it was pretty
funny people from Montana would come so far to look at
dead bison

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

Chateau De Beynac

Next morning, Sunday, May 5th, we drove up to Beynac-et-Cazenac's new camping aire, parked there, and walked on up to the Chateau de Beynac, a 12th century fortress that stayed mostly French during the 100 Years War.

Chateau de Beynac, rising from the morning river mists

Passing by the parc archaeologique; apparently leftovers
from the set of a movie about Joan of Arc; I believe some
episodes of F Troop may have been shot here as well

Still en route, this is the garage concealing that Ferrari
250 GTO you've been dreaming about finding...the present
owner has no interest in it--something about a divorce--says
you can have it if you can get it out of the garage, and, with
a quick jump-start, you are on the road, shifting into 5th...

Ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa...oops...so here
we are at the castle

Siege view of Chateau de Beynac

Main gate

People were much shorter in the Middle Ages

The Dordogne from Chateau de Beynac...Castelnaud and
Marqueyssac beyond (?)

Chateau yet to be identified

Vicki ponders what an appropriate down payment might be

In the village, the Pottery Barn

Walking down to the river-level village of Beynac-et-
Cazenac (where scenes from Chocolat, indeed starring
Johnny Depp, among others, were shot), we pass by the
Causerie Medievale; none of the French-type personnes
we encounter can tell us what causerie means; the nice
lady at the Office of Tourisme (where we bought some
Medieval toys for Penelope) later informs us it is a
society of Medieval re-enactors

The roads between the village below and the chateau are
among the most challenging we have seen; people do live
up here, and drive

Roofers' nightmare

People were much shorter in the Middle Ages

Precisely...we've skipped far more than we've seen; but
then we had seen a lot of it '89

Cruising The Dordogne

One of the things one does in these parts is a rented canoe ride or a boat cruise on the Dordogne. We checked out the canoe rentals, considered Vicki's surgically-repaired shoulder and my increasingly achy one, and opted for the goofy boat ride. See illustration. This was as close as you can get here to Disneyworld or EuroDisney...a very short ride (7 km), scenery no better than the road, a ridiculously silly and contrived audioguide story, narrated by a river boater of bygone ages, surrounded by unhappy 3 and 4 year old boys who became very unhappy when the boat turned around and Johnny Depp did not appear. Mike Fink's keel boat rides, en Francaise. And not inexpensive. Part of the learning experience.