Seeing the prehistoric cave art was worth a hundred bike rides up the Dordogne River, it was even worth the risk of 'feeling like a man who has been a tourist too long'. This is where words fall short, and all the pictures I see of the cave painting totally fail to convey the wonder, mystery and the sheer power of these artworks. Artworks they definitely are, beautiful forms made with masterful techniques using the contours of the cave walls. One painting of a bison in Font de Gaume uses a sort of fractured perspective. Apparently when Picasso saw it he said, "I did not invent cubism, then"
At the time of the cave paintings, about 15 000 BCE, the population of 'France' was probably around 10 000 people.
Font de Gaume is interesting for another reason. People were wandering in and out of the cave for years last century before anyone realsied there were faded pictures on the walls. There is even graffiti on the backs of one of the 80-odd bison
More impressive though, than the the beautiful paintings is the feeling of real history. There is evidence that this area has been lived in by Homo erectus, the Neanderthals as well as the Cro Magnon. It was the Cro Magnon though, who, over a few millenia, decorated a dozen or so deep caves, some rock shelters and perhaps countless other places.
Meeting Petr the Czech with perfect English (Dundee accent) helps me understand a bit more context, as well as sharing a homely dinner in the rain at the Les Eysies campground. Petr has been "flint knapping" - making tools from stone - for years, and, like Ronald Wright, sees the shift from these hunter-gatherer cultures to those based on farming as a bit of a backward step. He also worries about the future of our fossil fuel-intensive civilisation. 'We should be turning oil into foodstuffs' he says, 'instead of burning it'.
I ration myself to a couple of caves, and spend the rest of my time biking around the limestone valleys, passing the locked archaeological sites, imagining this landscape: stripped bare of trees with glacial cold, and peopled twenty thousand generations ago.
