At some point in remote prehistory, roughly 12,000 years ago, a group of men and women – no more than half a dozen, scientists believe – crawled into the labyrinth of Rouffignac cavern in the Dordogne’s Vézère valley. Once in its deepest recess, they lay on their backs and, in flickering candlelight, started painting on the rock ceiling 3ft above them. More than 60 images of mammoths, horses and ibex were outlined, each animal depicted in simple, confident lines that reveal startling artistic talent.
This is the Great Ceiling of Rouffignac, one of the world’s oldest and most beautiful art galleries. We have few clues as to who created it, though it was probably the work of the Cro-Magnons, the first members of Homo sapiens to settle in Europe 45,000 years ago and survivors of the Ice Age that later gripped the continent. Nor do we know why these artists picked such an inaccessible spot to display their genius – though fortunately it can be reached easily today. A tiny electric train runs from Rouffignac’s entrance to the Great Ceiling, the floor of which has been lowered to allow visitors to gaze up at its wonders.
It is a stunning experience, one of many to be found in this remarkable locale. In the 25km of the Vézère valley between Montignac and Les Eyzies there are 15 caves – including Rouffignac, Lascaux and others – which have been rated Unesco World Heritage sites because of their prehistoric art. If you want to understand the minds of our forebears, and appreciate the critical role that art has played in our evolution – issues raised by the British Museum’s superb exhibition, Ice Age Art, which closes on 2 June – then the Vézère is for you.
For good measure you can bike along its lanes, canoe on its rivers and enjoy the area’s confit du canard, Bergerac wines, chèvre, walnut oil and truffles. We stayed, and ate, at the appropriately named Lascaux Hotel in Montignac. Rooms were clean and comfortable while the dinners – which included slabs of foie gras, red mullet fillets and veal with mushrooms – were first class. After a cave visit we sat outside a café in one of the area’s delightful villages – Saint-Léon-sur-Vézère is particularly enchanting – and contemplated the wonders we had just witnessed over a beer and a glass of wine.
The good life was invented here, I suspect. Certainly you can appreciate why our species has hung around the Vézère – though standards were probably more basic in those early days. Our ancestors camped at cave entrances and enjoyed diets mainly made up of reindeer meat, to judge from the bones they left there.
Deep inside these caves, however, their minds moved to different matters and artists concentrated instead on the more majestic animals – mammoths and woolly rhinos – that then populated the Dordogne. These painters fully understood perspective and exploited rock bulges and crevices to create artwork that would have shifted and shimmered in the flickering lamps they carried.
The reason why they were created is obscure, however. Some scientists believe they may have enhanced rituals in which a clan’s shaman made contact with other spiritual realms. Whatever the case, it is clear that by this stage in our evolution art was now of critical importance to our species – for these works were created by full-time artists who would have required food, clothing and shelter from their clan members in order to carry out their work. Visiting the end results, buried in these deep caverns, is an unforgettable experience – and a privilege.
Hightlights of the Vézère valley
Grotte de Rouffignac: The cavern train carries you past friezes of woolly rhinos, superbly rendered in black, and engravings of mammoths, gouged into soft clay-limestone walls by artists who used their fingers. The cavern is also peppered with hollows scratched by hibernating bears. However, the trip’s pinnacle is the Great Ceiling. Covered by graffiti in the 19th century, the gallery has been fully restored. (grottederouffignac.fr; 00 33 5530 54171)
Lascaux II: The original Lascaux cave, outside Les Eyzies, was discovered in September 1940 and contains more than 600 prehistoric coloured paintings of horses, deer and mammoths. Thousands flocked to see them, triggering changes to the cave’s atmosphere that boosted the growth of algae and crystals on the artwork on its walls. In 1963 the cave was closed to the public and 20 years later an exact replica, Lascaux II, was opened. In addition to its vivid reproductions there are displays of the original artists’ tools as well as the hollowed stones they used as candle holders. Intriguingly, wicks were made of juniper wood which burns with a white smoke that did not damage the cave’s artwork. (semitour.com; 00 33 5535 19503)
Grotte de Font-de-Gaume: This cave is the only one in France with coloured paintings that can still be visited by the public and is rated a “must” by British prehistoric art expert Paul Bahn. Parties are restricted to eight individuals, and the cave has tight, twisting corridors which require some squeezing. It is worth it – if nothing else for the cave’s rare depiction of reindeer, a male nuzzling the face of a kneeling female, which is touching, deftly constructed and reveals not only the artistic skills of its creators but their considerable knowledge of animal behaviour and anatomy. (eyzies.monuments-nationaux.fr; 00 33 5530 68600)
Abri de Cap Blanc: Another must, Cap Blanc is made up of series of bas-reliefs created by artists who took advantage of the topography of the rock wall to sculpt a frieze of horses of startling impact. In front of the main horse, archaeologists uncovered the body of a young woman. Some believe she could be one of the artists responsible for creating this incredible work.(eyzies.monuments-nationaux.fr; 00 33 5530 68600; all visits should be booked in advance.)
The best guide to the region’s prehistoric sites is Cave Art: A Guide to the Decorated Ice Age Caves of Europe by Paul Bahn (Frances Lincoln, £16.99)
Essentials
Robin McKie travelled courtesy of the Dordogne Tourist Board (dordogne-perigord-tourisme.fr) and stayed at the Lascaux hotel in Montignac (hotel-lascaux.jimdo.com; 00 33 5535 18281), which has double rooms from €69 a night. The Vézère valley is an hour’s drive from Bergerac airport, which has daily flights to several cities in the UK with Flybe and Ryanair
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