Font de Gomme, aka Here thar be Cro-Magnons

After visiting Paris for the weekend, we took a train, through the land of the OCD to Les Eyzies. There are so many prehistoric sites here you could stay a month and not see them all, especially if, like us, you do not have a car. Les Eyzies is a beautiful, if a bit touristy, town with more Fois Gras and Vin then you would need in a life time. It has one of the few remaining medieval churches, which we had the opportunity to enter. I also made Jeffery trek over hill and dale looking for an abandon castle. We never found it, it wasn't even in the last place we looked and dad told me whatever your looking for would always be there. We did see signs for it, but I now suspect they were planted by a prank playing poodle. On the upside we did have a nice walk today, probably about 10 miles. We did find a permanent blind setup over a field where reindeer cross. We were very quiet and saw some domesticated cows. We also saw a donkey that spoke French. But the best part of the day was Font de Gomme, a cave with paintings that are about 15,000 years old, and the last cave of its kind that people are still allowed to visit. The tour guide was amazing and so was the cave.




Entrance to Font de Gomme

The walls were covered in paintings of bison, reindeer and horses. They were incredible. The artists may have been Cro-Magnons, but they were also very talented. The drawings have been covered by calcium deposits over the years, and because their black, red and brown coloring is hard yo see in the dark, they were not even discovered until 1902. Unfortunately, by then people had carved their names into the soft stone, so some were destroyed by the graffiti. Still as the guide lit each cavern and started pointing out the paintings, they became clear. All over the walls bison had been painted. And they weren't just painted on the wall, they were painted with the wall, the natural rock formations became jaws and stomachs and leg muscles, adding depth and a sculpture like quality to the paintings. For several paintings, they also carved the eye out of the stone, leaving a small raised pupil. They used shading and three colors, which is very rare, black (manganese), red(iron oxide), and brown. The brown is uncommon in any cave, and they're not sure what was used to make it. It's rare to see so many colors in cave paintings, but at Font de Gomme, there is the additional distinction that all three colors are used in a single painting.

They also have the rare distinction of having a painted scene, in addition to the march of the buffalo. The scene is two reindeer, one black, the other red. The red one is kneeling and the black reindeer is sniffing or licking the red reindeer. It is remarkably clear in the cave, and the tongue of the black reindeer is carved out of the stone, but we were not allowed to take pictures. I did purchase a book about the cave, but unfortunately the details are hard to see in the book photograph. It really helps when you can actually see the paint and the stones. Here's a rough idea of what it looked like:



Partial reindeer painting from Font de Gomme





My best attempt at indicating the reindeer.

It really is much easier to see in the cave, and the memory of what I saw in the cave helped me find the clues in the picture of a picture that I posted here. For example, the jaw of the red reindeer was formed by the rock, and the red antlers are very pale. The tongue of the black reindeer was also carved from the rock.

The clearest images in the cave was a series of five bison, which were cleaned of calcium and clay deposits in the 1960s. They were incredible. The details were so crisp and clear it was amazing. However our guide explained, it may be amused blessing. We should enjoy them now, because w/out the protective layer of calcite, no ones sure how long they will last. All in all it was an incredible experience.





And to finish off this post, here's a picture from when we were lost roaming the countryside. "Monet, where are you Monet? We found some hay that needs to be impressioned!"

Posted using BlogPress from my iPad (so please forgive typos or any down right weird phrases, everyone say Thank You auto correct).

Location:Les Eyzies, France