Prehistory in France

Between 40,000 and 10,000 years before Christ, Cro-Magnon man roamed the game-rich valleys and river banks of the Dordogne Valley, spearing deer, bison and rabbits, and living in rock shelters, lips of protective granite cliffs.

This was not the short, apelike man with the prognathous jaw. That hairy, undapper race was the far earlier and separate Neanderthal man. The Cro-Magnons were like us; according to rare, small museum sculptures, some of them were like the very best of us: the women with fine-boned faces, the men standing an average 5 feet 9 inches, with regular handsome features.

They wore ivory necklaces and carried decorative arms. They buried their dead under stone markers and laid them in the fetal position of slumber. They expressed tenderness and a sense of humor. And 30,000 years before the Greeks or Egyptians, they created Europe’s first great works of art.

Paleolithic (literally “old stone”) art flourished in the cliff-side caves of the Dordogne Department, which spreads over verdant valleys and forests east of Bordeaux.

Off Beaten Track

A corner of France that has remained off the beaten track, Dordogne is in the ancient province of Perigord and is world-renowned for its delectable specialties of foie gras and truffles. Dordogne also boasts 1,200 chateaux, graceful Romanesque churches and picturesque stone towns such as hillside St. Cyprien, the beautifully restored old town of Sarlat, and Monpazier, a spectacular example of a fortified commune, or bastide.

There is the pastoral Dordogne River and its tributary, the Vezere, for lazy sunning and canoeing, wildflower fields that beckon to picnickers, country roads and woodlands for long, tranquil walks.

But the great drama of the Dordogne takes place in the caves that cradled an early civilization and served as shrines for its art. This is not tourism with mass appeal, but is a remarkably rewarding look at a part of prehistory, which, as it becomes familiar, hardly seems so far off.

‘Capital of Prehistory’

An ideal base to visit the prehistoric region is Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, a little town between the cliffs, appropriately dubbed “the capital of prehistory.” It was there, in a hole beneath an ivy-covered rock, that a skeleton of Cro-Magnon (literally “big hole”) man was discovered in 1868.

There is also the National Museum of Prehistory, where skeletons, carved figures and artifacts are on display. And Les Eyzies is near the important sites, a few of them within walking distance.

Below is a list of some of the most spectacular sites. (Guided tours are in French only.)

La Roque Saint-Christophe. Carved out by millenia of rushing river waters, this five-story stone habitat looms like a prehistoric skyscraper 260 feet over peaceful valley pasturelands. It is one of about 20 cliff-dwelling clusters that dot the Vezere banks near Les Eyzies. The most famous is the Madeleine Deposit (Gisement de la Madeleine), which gave its name to the most recent Paleolithic age, the Magdalenian era of 12,000-9,000 BC. The Roque Saint-Christophe, however, is somewhat more grandiose.

Its first inhabitants, who lived between about 70,000 and 100,000 years before Christ, were Neanderthal men, named for the Neander Valley near Duesseldorf, Germany, where their remains were discovered. In a shallow cave shelter, the Musee Grevin, Paris’ wax museum, has erected a facsimile of the man of the house defending wife and child against an intruding 13-foot-tall bear.

Cro-Magnon man’s life was little more luxurious, although there was an abundance of smaller, more easily hunted game, and the fish-rich Vezere meandered below. Except for using fire, the Cro-Magnon family lived in their “house” as they found it. It is therefore all the more astounding to discover the delicacy of their art.

The decorated caves--La Mouthe, Les Combarelles, Font-de-Gaume, Rouffignac--testify to the art of hunters who stalked the mammoths, reindeer and wild horses that populated high Paleolithic Europe. But these are no crude hunter’s drawings. A guide holds a lamp up to a rugged stone wall and you’re face to face with a laughing donkey. A female bison kneels before a male who licks her forehead. Traces of a woman’s graceful leg appear seemingly from nowhere.

Archeologists know little about the meaning of these representations, but they may have religious signification and were possibly used in rituals of fecundity.

The artists made Herculean efforts to practice their art. For although they lived in the shallow cave mouths, they often painted deep inside them. Carrying oil lamps, they crawled down narrow passageways, traveling deeper and deeper to find fresh “canvases.” The temperature of their ateliers (workshops) was 54 degrees, the humidity 99%.

Stooping or lying on their backs, they painted walls and ceilings with charcoal and the red and yellow pigments of oxidized iron and ochre, and engraved images with stone styluses. Outlines in black were executed with “brushes,” color filled in by blowing pigment through a pipelike instrument.

But as astounding as these caves are, they are only a prelude to a visit to the world-renowned cave of Lascaux, dubbed by archeologists “the Sistine Chapel of prehistory.” Routinely studied in art history courses, Lascaux features cathedral-like chambers covered with grandiose paintings of bison, reindeer and horses.

The artistic techniques are extraordinary: a bison’s head is foreshortened, a horse’s gallop is analyzed in four successive movements. Visitors to Lascaux have long been awe-struck. Indeed, their enthusiastic pilgrimages nearly destroyed the historic works.

Discovered in 1940 by children playing in the surrounding pine forest, Lascaux quickly became a famous tourist attraction. The paintings, which a constant temperature, humidity and carbonic gas levels had preserved for 17,000 years, became endangered by algae and bacteria taken in from the outside world. Calcium deposits, the “white leprosy,” began creeping up the chamber walls.

In 1963 the French government closed the cave, and a large-scale project to produce a facsimile of Lascaux was undertaken. After 10 years of work by a fresco painter using prehistoric tools, Lascaux II opened a year and a half ago; the replica is to scale within five millimeters.

Meanwhile, five visitors a day, granted government permission, are allowed in the original cave. The inconspicuous hole in the ground is surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and guarded by two large German shepherd dogs.

Although not a hideout of Cro-Magnon man, the Gouffre de Padirac is a powerful piece of geological prehistory that should not be missed. About an hour’s drive from Les Eyzies, 10 miles from Rocamadour, the chasm plunges 338 feet into the earth and was formed by an underground affluent of the Dordogne, the Plane River, during the third ice age.

In a peaceful countryside of grazing cows, visitors are suddenly confronted with an immense opening in the ground, surrounded by scrubs, its precipitous sides draped with moss. Three successive elevators, or 550 steps, lead down to the Plane River, where small boats and rowers, evocative of the River Styx, await to lead the eerie tour.

The only light is provided by electricity and the sole river life is small, blind shrimp. The temperature is 54 degrees and the chasm is drenched in an eternal rain. Silently the boat slips between narrow canyon walls to the underground Lake of Rain, past a six-foot stalagmite that took 40,000 years to form.

At the foot of a waterfall a lone boat is tied and beyond it the green river waters flow into darkness. The boat is there for explorers who have penetrated six miles of the river’s nine-mile subterranean course.

Ascending from the realm of darkness and rain is like emerging from a dim prehistory into the sunshine and greenery of today’s Dordogne. A picnic of foie gras and wine seems a perfect antidote to the awesome gloom. A perfect place is just down the road after the village of Montvalent. The grassy bank of a country stream is shaded by the draping branches of a tree.

But if you look for the source of the river, you will find only a tiny hole in a stone wall. There is no plaque to mark the place where the Plane River surfaces, but a voyager who has followed its underground course is thrilled to see it meander through country fields beneath the sun on its way to join the Dordogne.