Chauvet Cave’s Ice Age art - Jean Clottes at the British Museum

I've always been an enthusiast.
Definition: "a person who is filled with enthusiasm for some principle, pursuit, etc." From the Greek meaning 'one inspired.'

I'm quite well known for it, even at work. Former colleagues frequently laughed at my enthusiasm for the software products for which I provided technical support. At that time I was so enthusiastic about one product in particular, Strobe, that I usually managed to 'sell it' to a prospective new customer's technical team before our sales force had even made the first pitch.

I'm also rather enthusiastic about ice age art and the Swimming Reindeer, France and linguistics, which may now be obvious.

So, being an enthusiast myself, I love to encounter fellow enthusiasts, people who are passionate about something, often their work, but sometimes something else entirely.And when that enthusiast is also an expert, well, that's a real bonus.

Yesterday I took a day's holiday from work in order to return to the British Museum for an evening lecture  by Jean Clottes who is, without doubt, a real enthusiast, an expert in his field, and an inspiration. The lecture was called - A unique discovery: Chauvet Cave’s Ice Age art.

I travelled by train, with my copy of one of his many books, my notepad and my pen. And as I often find myself engaged in long conversations with my fellow passengers in crowded compartments, and since this time I really wanted to be able to sit and read and make notes, I bought a First Class ticket which extravagance granted me a whole four leather seats and table all to myself, and a compartment free of noise and distraction.

 
 
The day was not without irritations and frustrations, quite a few in fact which could have cast a cloud on my visit, but there were compensations. Meeting my son, The Ragazzo, albeit after a long game of cat and mouse during which we both managed to avoid finding each other; a frustrating game that ended when I finally decided that he'd failed to arrive and was about to disappear into an exhibition, whereupon I spotted him in the crowd. (No, I didn't have my mobile phone (see I dislike modern technology) which led to a telling-off from The Ragazza when I arrived home late and having broken my curfew.)

So I was able to take my son to the Ice-Age Art exhibition, which was actually very crowded and therefore not nearly as much fun as my first visit. It was so crowded that we couldn't get close enough to read the descriptions of the objects, which meant that I had to describe and explain (in hushed tones, of course) a little about them. That attracted the attention of a very little old lady who seemed to have got it into her head that I was An Authority, and who proceeded to ask me a great many questions, before demanding that I sort out her audio-visual tour equipment. I fully expected her to tip me at the end of her visit, and perhaps she would have, had I not been standing mesmerised before a certain carving of two swimming reindeer.

When the Ragazzo had to leave to prepare for a gig at which he was due to drum (he's a music student in London), I had an hour to fill before the lecture started. I could have cut to the front of the long queue for the new Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibition and, waving my Member's Card, I could have  walked in for free and in front of everyone who'd been waiting for over an hour, but taking advantage of that privilege seemed rather rude and inconsiderate to me, so I opted for a twenty minute lecture on the Rosetta Stone, given by an unpaid volunteer and enthusiast.

And then to the lecture hall, by way of a photo shoot in the mirror of the ladies toilets. I took the picture because I am camera-shy, and since I have been asked if I'm happy to have my picture taken with the hand axe that I've been gifted by the chap who led the flint napping course at the museum a few weeks ago, I decided that it's time to stop being self-conscious.

So, Chauvet's cave and Jean Clottes...

La grotte Chauvet, grotte Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc ou encore grotte de la Combe d'Arc est une grotte ornée paléolithique située en Ardèche (France). Le site comporte 420 représentations d'animaux (peintures, gravures). 

De nombreuses datations directes par la méthode du carbone 14 ont donné des résultats cohérents proches de 31 000 ans BP. 

La communauté scientifique admet quasi unanimement que les œuvres de la grotte Chauvet datent de l'Aurignacien et comptent parmi les plus anciennes au monde. 

La diversité et la maîtrise des techniques dont elles témoignent ont profondément remis en cause l'idée d'un art préhistorique évoluant très lentement et de manière linéaire et ascendante.
(Wikipedia.fr)

 

 
Jean Clottes, préhistorien, est principalement connu du grand public pour les études qu'il a réalisées sur les grottes de Chauvet, de Cosquer et de Niaux.




Il a également participé, sur le terrain, aux travaux sur les grottes d'Enlène, la grotte du Placard ou le Tuc d'Audoubert.
Il est l'un des grands spécialistes de l'art préhistorique.

(http://www.hominides.com/html/biographies/jean-clottes.php)


Translations are available, for the non-Francophones, but the important point to mention is that the Chauvet cave is special because it proves that the ability for create prehistoric art did not evolve gradually over many thousands of years, the paintings on the walls of the cave are so old and so sophisticated they prove that over 35,000 years ago our ancestors were already skilled artists.

In December 1994 Jean Clottes received a phone call. A new cave had been discovered in the Ardeches region of France.  He was told to come quickly. It was the holiday period, his family had gathered to celebrate, it was not a good time to leave them behind and to drive 400 kms to explore a cave. He went, of course he went. And the rest is, as they say, history...

Can you imagine how it must have felt to descend into the caves, to wriggle on your belly through a tiny passage, so tiny that the men were obliged to remove as much of their clothing as possible in order to squeeze through the rocks, to emerge on a ledge in a cavern where the stalactites and stalagmites had grown, untouched and undisturbed for thousands of years, and to be one of the first people to see the palaeolithic paintings in the cave at Chauvet?

There are horses...

Thought to have been painted by one person, these horses form the centrepiece of the Chauvet cave.

There are rhinos...

This pair of males are fighting.  Such naturalistic scenes are rare in palaeolithic cave art, which makes this painting unique, and special.


  

There are lions...

Although it is usually only the females who hunt, this scene also includes males, since the pride is hunting a bison.

There are cave bears...

The cave bears were large, ferocious and to be avoided, and they dwelt in the caves.

Cave bear skulls have been found collected in heaps and with femur bones carefully placed nearby.

There is an owl...

I don't think I've ever seen an owl in a piece of cave art. This one has his head turned completely round, the ancestors were obviously also impressed by this trick.






There are others, many, many others. I could sit and post pictures all  day, or you could buy the book by Jean Clottes and read all about them for yourself. Suffice to say that the hour-long lecture was brilliant and the applause at the end was long and enthusiastic. We had all been captivated and enthralled and would probably have sat and listened to Jean Clottes all night. 

At the end of the talk and slide show, Jill Cook invited questions.
I sat with my hand raised, but hesitantly and shyly, I lacked the confidence to catch her eye and so didn't get to ask my question of M. Clottes. I admit to feeling disappointed, and to mentally berating myself for my cowardice. An opportunity to ask a question from one of one's heroes doesn't often arrive and I had failed to grasp it.

So, I did something that was totally out of character, for me.
When the last question had been asked, and as people were leaving, I marched down to the front of the lecture hall, I politely took Jill Cook aside, and I asked her if I might request that he sign my copy of his book?



As he did I told him I'd heard his talk about the Chauvet cave on radio France Culture, that it had been fascinating.

Jean Clottes looked surprised. I don't think he expected me to chat to him in French. I hadn't either but it just happened.




And so I left the museum late, by which time the sun had set and the lights of London were shining brightly. The journey by tube back to Paddington station was, thankfully, speedy and event-free. I emerged from the underground to find a fast train to Swansea conveniently waiting at Platform 3.

I took my First Class seat, drew the curtain, opened my book and sat back to look at the pictures and to smile contentedly as the train sped through the darkness. An hour later I was home, exhausted, totally and utterly exhausted but inspired, very, very inspired by an evening listening to Jean Clottes talking about the Chauvet cave.

Links:
Jean Clotte - article in Time Europe 
Bradshaw Foundation - The Cave Art Paintings of the Chauvet Cave 

Flint Napping at the British Museum

Flint is a hard, sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as a variety of chert. It occurs chiefly as nodules and masses in sedimentary rocks, such as chalks and limestones. Inside the nodule, flint is usually dark grey, black, green, white, or brown in colour, and often has a glassy or waxy appearance. A thin layer on the outside of the nodules is usually different in colour, typically white and rough in texture.

Flint was used in the manufacture of tools during the Stone Age as it splits into thin, sharp splinters called flakes or blades (depending on the shape) when struck by another hard object (such as a hammerstone made of another material). This process is referred to as knapping.
(Wikipedia)

My interest in the stone tools made by our ancestors was aroused by the BBC radio series A History of the World in 100 objects.  Once I'd heard, and been captivated by, the episode devoted to The Swimming Reindeer I became a devoted follower of the other ninety-nine objects chosen by the director of the British Museum from their collections.


 




Object No 3 Olduvai Hand Axe, the first great invention of early man, some 1.5 million years ago.
Found by Louis Leakey in Olduvai Gorge, Africa.






This hand axe made of green volcanic lava represents a tradition of tool-making which began about 1.6 million years ago. Smaller hand axes became common handheld tools used for cutting meat or woodworking. Produced with great skill by ancestors we would recognize as becoming human, this object shows that manufactured things, sometimes of distinctive quality, were starting to be important in the evolution of our behaviour.

Humans spread out of Africa

The makers of handaxes are the first humans to spread across Africa into Central Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Asia. Handaxes reflect the first great spread of humankind and the establishment of a way of life in which we recognize the beginnings of our human characteristics. No other humanly made object has ever been manufactured over such a long period and before the 20th century no other object has spread over such a wide geographical area.
(BBC A History of the World in 100 Objects) 

As part of the Ice Age Art exhibition at the British Museum a flint napping course had been offered, it was an opportunity that I couldn't fail to grasp so last Saturday, after visiting the exhibition, and sustained by a bowl of pasta of mammoth-proportions, I joined a group of fellow-enthusiasts for the workshop.



It was led by Karl Lee of Primitive Technology UK  lovely chap with a great sense of humour, a good knowledge of archaeology and an obvious passion for his work. As he demonstrated the art of flint napping he described the materials, from the raw flint, to the stones, antlers and copper that are used to transform a lump of rock into a life-saving hand tool.    


The process of napping involves holding the flint in one hand and gently, but firmly, striking it with the stone or antler so that thin slivers of flint fracture and fall from the underside.

He made it look ridiculously easy.  

 

A sample of his work some of which I picked up and held in my hand and yes, I could imagine using one quickly to cut up a carcass.

Preferably the one in the bottom left of the picture.

Hand axes were made for use by men, women and children. In the harsh climate of the Ice Age it was essential that everyone assisted in the dismembering of the kill before larger, vicious predators arrived on the scene. 

It was the first modern technology, brought by our ancestors when they left Africa.


It was also used by our cousins, the Neanderthals who, far from being the savage beasts that many accounts portray them to have been, were pretty much like our own branch of the evolutionary tree, the homo sapiens. But more about the cousins in a later post. Suffice to say that I was pleased that Karl also shares my views on the Neanderthals. 

So, after the demonstration and instruction we were given a piece of flint from which to nap our own hand tools.



I am not a practical person.
I tried very hard to create a good flint tool but alas, I was caught napping and one hasty chip with my stone caused my formerly leaf-shaped tool to fracture. I was a little crest-fallen but Karl was reassuring, "Keep napping and you'll have a handy little tool that you could use to skin an animal."



Towards the end of the workshop Dr Jill Cook, mother of the Ice Age Art exhibition, arrived to see how we were doing. We were very enthusiastic, wonderful workshop given by a great teacher, let's have more such opportunities to learn and engage with such topics, please. Oh and also, may we have sleepovers at the British Museum for adults? It's not fair that only kids get to spend the night in the galleries.

While checking on Karl Lee's website for this post I discovered, to my delight, that he sells flint tools.

Of course, I'm planning to order this one.

Rather beautiful, isn't it?

Ice Age Art - The British Museum Exhibition

This one's for Marja-Leena...

I'd waited a while. The British Museum's Ice Age Art  exhibition has been open for over a month, I'd read about it, I'd eagerly anticipated a visit, fate, life, had other plans.

Until this weekend.
Last night I attended a lecture called "Art and the arrival of the modern mind" in one of the museum's lecture theatres. It was fascinating but frustrating, everyone else had, it seemed, seen the exhibition, everyone except me.

Today I went to see for myself. So here is my amateur but very enthusiastic account of a visit to the Ice Age Art exhibition at the British Museum.


Note, the exhibition is very popular and was fully-booked.
I was able simply to turn up and wander in thanks to my membership of the museum which grants me free and unrestricted entry to the exhibitions at any time, a generous discount in the shop and the restaurants, and a member's cloakroom and lounge, in addition to special member's events and evenings.  It has been a real gift to me.

So, let's wander back in time some 40,000 years....


 This is a thought-provoking exploration of the masterpieces of sculpture, drawing and decoration of the last Ice Age. Produced between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, this is some of the oldest known figurative art in the world. Looking at these art works provides a fascinating insight into the earliest modern minds and their capacity to express ideas symbolically through art.

Over 100 objects are featured, including small but exquisite sculptures made from mammoth ivory, engraved drawings, ceramic models, decorated objects and jewellery from the age of the great painted caves. Some are celebrated masterpieces such as the Swimming Reindeer (13,000 years old), the so- called Willendorf Venus (25,000 years old), the Vogelherd Horse (32,000 years old) and the Lion Man (32,000 years old); others are lesser- known treasures from the collections of European museums. The author examines them in a new light, as works of aesthetic – not solely archaeological – interest, and as such forming part of an unbroken continuum of human creativity.

The compelling narrative is also illustrated with a wealth of images, from classical sculpture to twentieth-century painting and even contemporary advertising campaigns, which demonstrate surprising aesthetic parallels between these ancient works and familiar modern pieces.

In this way, Ice Age art will bring home the point that the minds that created these objects in all their diversity and inventiveness were modern minds like our own, capable of highly sophisticated thought and expression.
(British Museum)
 

It's 40,000 years ago. Europe is emerging from the last Ice Age, Britain is joined to continental Europe, ice covers most of the country.





Times are hard, food is not abundant, your prey is difficult to catch and kill armed, as you are, only with stone tools, and if you do manage to bring down a bison or catch a reindeer, well, there are other predators ready to deprive you of your kill and, if you're not agile and smart, of your own life.


You are an early human, out of Africa, a cave-dweller, you lack sophistication, some people would even suggest that you are still a savage.
Or are you?

The oldest known figurative art in Europe appeared 40,000 years ago.
Our species, homo sapiens, was not solely surviving the harsh realities of life in the Ice Age, they were also creating art. They were painting the walls of the caves that gave them shelter, with vivid and breathtakingly beautiful images of reindeer and bison, lions and rhinos.

They were carving the tusks of mammoth and reindeer to create beautiful sculptures, and not just of the animals that figured so prominently in their everyday lives, but also of naked women, of pregnant women and of women in childbirth, they were making amulets to hang round their necks and they were making models of fantasy creatures.

Pause to think about the time span. 40,000 years ago and our ancestors were making art.





       
 I took few pictures during my visit to the Ice Age Art exhibition.
The lighting was subdued, cave-like, people wandered in silence, for me the atmosphere was reverential, almost religious. I wanted to look and to really see, rather than be distracted by my camera. I did, however, feel compelled to capture a few images,so here are the best of them...

The Zaraysk Bison
Zaraysk, Osetr Valley, Russia

This sculpture of an adult, female bison was carved from the the tusk of a mammoth.

It is around 21,000 years old

The Lion Man
Hohle Feis Cave, Baden-Wurrtenburg, Germany
What makes this statue special and so significant is that it is not a carving of a real animal. This is a figment of one of our ancestors imagination and it shows that the human mind had taken a huge leap forward.

There are theories that the Lion Man may have had a special significance, perhaps it was used in shamanic rituals devoted to giving the lion's strength and hunting skills to its owner.

Carvings of deer on the tusk of a mammoth

This pair are quite simple but quite lovely.

A collection of horses, mammoths, and lions.
Some of the carvings have holes in them which leads us to believe that they were designed to be worn as pendants, interestingly upside-down so that the wearer could lift them to look at them.




Why? Because they were beautiful, or was it because they would endow the animal's qualities on the wearer?    

The Woman from Dolni Vestonice
The oldest known ceramic lady.

A full-figured mature lady made from earth baked in a fire. She has obviously borne children, her body bears the evidence of motherhood.



Was she revered as such? Was she seen as the perfect example of the female form? Rounded, soft, fertile? Was that her claim to fame that resulted in her appearance in a museum 30,000 years later?

I wish that I'd taken pictures of the little statues of pregnant women, some evidently at the start of their pregnancies, some heavily pregnant, some in the act of giving birth. Sadly they were too small to be captured on film, they have to be examined up close and personal to appreciate their beauty.

But I was struck by how much our ancestors revered pregnant women and how they must have been captivated and fascinated by the whole process of giving life to the next generation. It's also obvious that pregnancy and child birth would have been very dangerous times in the lives of these women, little wonder that so many statues and carvings were made, possibly to offer them protection.

Art and Identity

It is always subjective, is an object decorative or utilitarian? Sometimes we have clues, the beads and pendants that are found still adorning bodies that were buried so long ago, the carving placed on the breastbone of a corpse...



Sometimes, in the absence of evidence and of clues we have to use our imagination  

The Swimming Reindeer Carved on a mammoth tusk 13,000 years ago and found in Montastruc, France.

Not a good picture, I was a little over-excited to be, once again, up close and personal with my favourite museum piece. 

But how could I not include The Swimming Reindeer?



I'll doubtless write about them again. In the museum shop I bought a small book devoted to these reindeer, written by one of the curators, Dr Jill Cook, who kindly signed my copy. I admit it, I am not averse to a little hero-worship, even at my age.  

If I have one criticism, no, request, it would be that the Swimming Reindeer be given pride of place in the exhibition. But that's my own, highly personal opinion based on my devotion to this particular piece of Ice Age Art. It was a chance-meeting, a serendipitous meeting, that introduced me to this sculpture and so to a late-flowering fascination with the Ice Age.  


I've collected many books on the subject of the prehistoric, several about our cousins, the Neanderthals, some devoted to cave paintings, a few weighty tomes on the evolution of the human brain, and now this one has been added to my book shelf...    

My two trips to London were exhausting. I don't feel comfortable in a crowd and I don't feel at home in a city.

So, on Sunday, as I recover from my adventures and plan a quiet day reading my books by the fire and revisiting my memories of the Ice Age Art exhibition, it's rather fitting that this is the scene that greeted me as I pulled back the curtains this morning.

Thick, fat snowflakes falling on the green


The story of how I followed my visit to the exhibition with a workshop on flint napping and made my very own flint hand tool will have to wait for another post, suffice to say I am now equipped to skin a mammoth should the carcass of one happen to appear on the village green today. And if it keeps on snowing as heavily as it is now that could be a distinct possibility! 

A few links:

British Museum - Ice Age Art

Lascaux

Interview with Dr Jill Cook on Ice Age Art

The Swimming Reindeer

As with art and literature and my love of languages, I came to history late in life.
I daresay that youth is a time of looking forward and not back, and that we ourselves have to age a little before we can appreciate history. Perhaps we must have a past of our own before we can appreciate the Past?

Well, it seems to have been the case for me.

When I was in France I fell in love with The Past, so easy to do in such a celtic culture and where medieval villages and old houses nestles in the folds of hillsides, and where menhirs dot the landscape.

It was a television programme called "The Day We Learned To Think" that first sparked my interest in the transition of our species from the first bi-pedal ape that descended from the trees to who, and what, we have become today. And, as so often happens when a passing interest becomes a passion, I began to study Ice Age Art in the form of cave paintings, and then to purchase prints of those at Lascaux to adorn the walls of my own twenty-first century caves in Oxfordshire and in Brittany, and to collect books and to visit museums, and so it continues....

And on my journey of discovery I learned that I find it so much easier to comprehend and to connect with the past than with the present or the future, especially the future.

I'm coming to the reindeer...

Let me take you back some four years to a difficult and challenging period in my life, not long after I'd returned from France. Stress plays havoc with the immune system and I had succumbed to a chest infection which meant that I was obliged to spend some time in bed, sick. I do not sleep alone, my favourite bed-mates being BBC Radio 4 when I'm in England and France Culture when I'm back in Brittany. They're my adult equivalent of sleeping with the light on.

We're getting to the reindeer
So, there I was, in bed, snoozing during the daytime and in that unpleasant state when the brain asks "Why are you in bed when your circadian rhythms decree that you should be up and active", and the body replies "I'm sick, let me rest" and the result is a strange disharmony of being that can be most unpleasant.

And during my time in bed I heard a new series called A History Of The World In 100 Objects
Not only that, but the episode that I listened to as I lay in bed fighting the bugs focused on The Swimming Reindeer.

 

Found in France and dating back 13,000 years, this is a carving of two swimming reindeer. The creator of this carving was one of the first humans to express their world through art. (BBC)





   This sculpture of two swimming reindeer is one of the oldest works of art in the British Museum. It was carved from the tip of a mammoth tusk and made during an extraordinary period of artistic creativity during the last Ice Age. Such works of art could be carried around, bringing images found in the great painted caves of Europe into the daylight. These Ice Age artists were fully modern people with the same mental abilities as humans today.

What was Ice Age art used for?

The artist has depicted the reindeer as they look in autumn. At this time of year the meat, skin and antlers are at their best for use as food, clothing and materials for making equipment. Showing the reindeer swimming may suggest migration or a moment when the animals were easy prey for their human hunters. Was this sculpture a means of communicating with the supernatural world or a charm to guarantee a successful hunt at the start of a bitterly cold Ice Age winter?
(BBC)
 

I was entranced.
13,000 years ago someone sat by the banks of a river in France and gazed in awe at the herds of reindeer swimming by and was so fascinated and moved by these animals that he carved an image on a piece of mammoth tusk.

 He was one of the first homo sapiens, thinking humans, to express his admiration in art
To create something purely for pleasure
To leave a legacy for us

Something, between say 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, happens in the human brain, that allows this fantastic creativity, imagination, artistic abilities, to emerge.' (Professor Steven Mithen)

It's perhaps silly but this little reindeer-loving Francophile was deeply moved by this object
and very, very inspired by the gift from the past
Which is, I think, a wonderful land
N'est-ce pas?

And so began my love affair with Ice Age Art sculptures, and especially the Swimming Reindeer, an enduring love that led to a wonderful meeting during a Mother's Day excursion organised by my offspring (also known as The Ragazzi), and many, many 'listening-agains' to the podcast of that episode, and the recent purchase of a copy of the carving of the reindeer that now sits on a bookcase in my small sitting room and which I sit and admire often. And next weekend, there will be another meeting when we visit the British Museum's Ice Age Art exhibition during which my the Swimming Reindeer will be the main attraction.

As a scientifically-minded youngster I never understood the value of culture, as in the arts. It has taken me all of this time to appreciate that which culture adds to our lives, how it enriches us, how it enlightens us, and how it is our culture that makes us who we are. Isn't it rather amazing that someone sitting by a river, carving a pair of reindeer on a piece of mammoth tusk, in France, thirteen thousand years ago was responsible for such a shift in my way of thinking?

That's what being human is all about.