Lascaux Cave

My visit to the Lascaux cave10/6/10

Dexter Breunig

The Hall of the Bulls

• The issue of access to the walls of the cave was raised from the start of research at Lascaux. The location of certain figures, painted where the cave wall meets the ceiling – a height of between 2.5 and 3.5 meters – particularly in the Hall of the Bulls and the Axial Gallery, but in the Apse as well, was the source of a great many questions.

Axial Gallery

• Figures appear on both sides of this 30-metre-long gallery. On the right are three panels, the Panel of the Chinese Horses, the Panel of the Falling Cow and the Red Panel, featuring two horses and a bison. To the left is the Panel of the Red Cows, the Panel of the Great Black Bull, the Panel of the Hermione and, to the rear, the Upside-Down Horse. The totality includes 161 graphic entities, of which 58 are figurative (mostly animals), and 46 are various geometric signs – quadrangular, branching, rectilinear, nested elements, cruciform and groups of dots. There are also 57 indeterminate figures that may be signs, but that also may be sketches for animal figures.

Passageway

• The Passageway links the Hall of the Bulls to the Nave and the Apse. It contains a great concentration of images that are often difficult to decipher. A total of 385 engraved and painted figures have been counted and identified, including horses, bison, ibexes, bovines, stags and various signs in the shapes of hooks, crosses and squares.

Nave

• There are four panels on the left wall of the Nave – those of the Seven Ibexes, the Imprint, the Great Black Cow and the Crossed Bison. The right wall contains only the Frieze of the Swimming Stags. The slope of the floor is the cause of this uneven distribution. The species depicted include horses, ibexes, stags, bison and aurochs, but in quite different proportions. As in every other part of the cave, horses are the dominant theme, with twenty-seven separate depictions in the Nave. The aurochs, on the other hand, appears only once, but dominates through its sheer size and its position at the centre of this vast tableau. There are also nine ibexes, six five bison, and six stags.

Chamber of the Felines

• The Chamber of the Felines extends for roughly 25 meters, along which André Glory counted more than 80 figures. Of the 51 animal figures in this gallery, the horse is the dominant species, with twenty-nine representations, followed by nine bison, four ibexes and three stags. There are no aurochs. Images of felines are more present here, with six depictions, than in the rest of the cave.

The Apse

• On a wall space of some thirty square meters, and an average ceiling height of 3.5 meters, the Apse contains over a thousand figures. They include nearly 500 animals and 600 geometric signs or lines. They appear on the walls and ceiling, and with no interruption. Their density increases at the entrance at the far end, and reaches its peak in the Apsidal, which is located at the base of the Shaft in the farthest part of this gallery. The very soft limestone surface provides a partial explanation for such a graphic outpouring.`

The Shaft

• Shaft contains only a limited number of figures: eight in all. Four are figures of animals (a horse, a bison, a bird and a rhinoceros) and three others are geometric shapes (dots and hooks). In the centre of the composition, the eye is drawn to a human figure. One notes on the right-hand wall a horse, and the left-hand wall contains all the other figures in a space about three meters square. This arrangement, made famous by its narrative potential, is one of the rare examples in which the subjects and themes refer to a specific episode, leaving us to imagine the possibility that this is a message to be interpreted. Hence the name that has been given to this panel: the "Shaft Scene".

Source

• Lascaux Cave