2002 Letter from LASCAUX CAVES (NEAR PERIGUEUX): Our guidebook had suggested that Perigueux was a good stepping off place for the Cro-Magnon cave paintings at Lescaux. So we set off for a small town near the caves. We’ve all seen pictures of these paintings, but apparently the original cave is now closed. Too many visitors inadvertently started various things growing on the paintings, and the government closed up the cave to save the paintings. But they made an exact replica for tourists to see, and that is where we were headed.

The cave was found in 1940 when a tree that had been uprooted in a storm left an open hole in the ground. A group of teen-age boys walking along with a dog found the cave when the dog fell into the hole! They had to go after her, and saw the paintings, which had been perfectly preserved in the cave for 17,000 years.

You’ve all seen pictures of these paintings with their three colors, and the paintings utilizing features of the stone. The use of the three colors and the way the artists took advantage of the unevenness of the walls to depict animals (mostly bulls, deer and horses) in three dimensions was amazing. We were struck by how much more advanced these were than the petroglyphs of the "Anasazi" which we saw in the western US. After describing the way the new cave had been constructed, and showing us all the paintings, the guide turned off the dim lights that had been on. Then he asked everyone to take out lighters, to duplicate the way the cave was originally lit with the animal fat lamps that were found on the floor. In the wavering light the animals looked as if they were moving.

Next morning we completed the tour by going to a small museum where there were displays showing the exact methods used to duplicate the caves as well as some ancient artifacts. They also had a little park with animals whose ancestors appeared in the paintings – deer, the breed of horse now found only in the Gobi Desert, and bison. We didn’t stay for that, but headed southwest again.