Rare privilege, in the year 2000 “Télérama” ventured into the real Chauvet cave

IN OUR ARCHIVES – Thirty years ago, a cave containing wall frescoes unique in the world was discovered in Ardèche. Our journalist was allowed to visit it before a replica was opened to the public in 2015.

DIn the morning, the sun beats down on the vines, at the foot of the limestone cliff. Below, the Ardèche flows quietly between the bends of its bed. The stony path, dug like a bleed in the side of the rock, brutalizes the calves and hurts the breath. At a height of 70 meters, after twenty minutes of walking, a tiny clearing opens up. A discreet wooden footbridge, in the shade of boxwood and holm oaks, leads to an unexpected installation: armored door, surveillance camera and fingerprint recognition system.

This entrance worthy of a bank protects a hidden treasure: the oldest known decorated cave, measuring more than 7,000 square meters. Named after one of the three Ardèche speleologists who found it, the Chauvet cave contains cave paintings dating from 32,000 years before the present day. Discovered in December 1994, it is unfortunately most famous for a legal drama concerning the rights of the three explorers, then the compensation of the owners of the land, which delayed the start of the work by three years. However, the Chauvet cave is above all a place of passionate and essential research for a handful of scientists.

There are twelve prehistorians, paleontologists, specialists in cave art (executed on the walls), experts in bears and soils. Twice a year, they come to spend two weeks at the Salavas leisure center, very close to Vallon-Pont-d’Arc. Every morning, they drive the 12 kilometers that lead to the small field of vines, then tackle the climb to the cave.

Jean Clottes, renowned specialist in prehistoric art and general heritage curator, directs this work with constant concern for the protection of the site. “That is why our numbers are limited, he explains. But also come, occasionally, ethnologists, geologists, climatologists, palynologists (experts en pollens, editor’s note)or art historians. »

In mid-May, the fifth campaign ends, in front of the camera of Pierre Oscar Lévy. The scientists accepted the discreet but permanent presence of a film crew at their side: for a year and a half, the director has been following each mission step by step. The first part of his series, broadcast on June 3 on Arte, was filmed “in front of the door”. Because no one, except the researchers, enters the sanctuary. The Ardèche department has promised a space to reconstruct the cave, but the cave itself will probably never be open to the public. Since the first campaign in 1998, the team has identified 441 animal figures – horses, bison, but especially mammoths, rhinoceroses, bears, cave lions. “This representation of dangerous animals is new, underlines Jean Clottes. In Lascaux, 17,000 years old, most of the paintings evoke hunted animals, reindeer or aurochs. » The human figures are limited to a few female genitalia engraved in the rock and a figure called “the sorcerer”, half-man, half-bison.

The Homo sapiens of 32,000 years ago did not live in the cave, they only came there to paint. Carbon-14 dating also identifies traces of a second human passage, 26,000 years before the present day. Between the two, the cavity was occupied by bears, whose bones litter the ground. Then nothing more: the cave probably closed suddenly, following a movement of the cliff, which contributed to its extraordinary preservation.

“The meaning of these works was probably religious, in my opinion even shamanic,” says Jean Clottes. There were undoubtedly legends around the Pont d’Arc, this marvelous arch dug into the cliff by the Ardèche. It is located 500 meters as the crow flies from the cave, it cannot be a coincidence. Personally, I think that the men of that time considered the cave as a supernatural world, and painted to come into contact with dangerous animals, sacred figures. »

After passing the armored door and then a small tunnel, the researchers arrive at a well. They go down about ten meters: inside, it is 12° all year round; some rooms measure up to 50 meters wide with a height varying between 40 centimeters and 20 meters. While waiting for the installation of titanium footbridges, which will facilitate their movement, the researchers are moving forward on plastic “strips”, 50 centimeters wide, so as not to damage the clay soils. Often, they study the panels from several meters away, armed with binoculars and torches, or use a camera attached to a telescopic pole, which allows them to explore inaccessible corners. Photos, precise readings, notes: each feature, relief, crack, accident of the rock is recorded.

In the clearing, the team has lunch around a stone wall and spools of cable, improvised tables. Michel Garcia, specialist in soils and the study of traces, shows Pierre Oscar Lévy’s camera a fragment of soil bearing the clear imprint of the heel of a bear, which skidded on a clay embankment. Accidentally fallen, this small piece of cave will be one of the few to see the open air.

Mastery of perspective, use of blur, concern for volumes…

Dominique Baffier, cave art specialist

In the middle of the afternoon, the group returned to the Salavas base. In the study room, various treasures are spread out on the work tables: a bear’s penis bone, a cast of wolf tracks, photos of the palms of hands, ocher and applied directly to the rock. By assembling the photos by computer, enlarging them, correcting the effects of the reliefs, scientists can dissociate the artist’s gesture from bear claws or cracks in the rock, detect the lines traced with flint, wood or using your finger, reconstruct the chronology of the drawing. “We find a mastery of perspective, a use of blurring, a concern for astonishing volumes”explains Dominique Baffier, cave art specialist. “This discovery upset accepted theories on the evolution of art, notably by André Leroi-Gourhan (ethnologist and prehistorian, author of Prehistory of Western art, ed. Citadelles Mazenod), continues her colleague Carole Fritz. He believed in a linear progression, over a fairly short time, of artistic techniques. » However, Chauvet proves that, 15,000 years before the paintings of Lascaux, man had already mastered an elaborate art: this is the sign of an evolution rather in fits and starts, with successive ups and downs depending on the place and the eras.

Without digging – no actual excavation has begun – the researchers found, on the surface of the soil, a quantity of bones and skulls (especially of bears), a horse’s tooth, the hearths which were used to make the charcoal. , an ivory assegai, flint tools, a coprolite – fossilized droppings – of a bear or wolf. Michel Garcia is working on a trail of footprints of an adolescent, discovered at the bottom of the cave, which dates from the second recorded human passage, 26,000 years ago. He also identified the traces “of a large canid, a wolf that resembles a dog. This may provide clues to the transformation of wolves into dogs, predating those dated 14,000 years ago, found in Germany. » If the animal accompanied the child, this would indicate a very ancient domestication of the wolf.

By connecting floors and walls, human and animal traces, the team seeks to reconstruct an entire universe. Jean-Michel Geneste, also a soil specialist, explains: “From a flint tool, we can know where the rock that composes it comes from, determine if it was used to engrave, tan a skin or scrape a wall, if it was made on site or brought. It provides information on the artists’ journey, their techniques and their environment. »

Friday May 19, last day of the mission. The researchers roll up the plans of the cave, tidy up the archives and files. The virgin supplies are stored in iron canteens until the next campaign in October. In the meantime, the cave will receive visits from some geologists and workers who will install the footbridges. Pierre Oscar Lévy also packs up his filming equipment. He very much hopes to soon be able to cross the armored door and deliver to the lens of his camera some of the splendors of Chauvet.

Published in the Telerama n° 2629 of 31 May 2000.