Lascaux Cave and the Stunning Primordial Art of a Long Lost World

let's go cave and the stunning primordial art of a long-lost world before we start please take a moment to give this video a like subscribe to blast world mysteries and hit the bell icon so you'll never miss these great stories glimpsing into the mind of the Paleolithic man is by no means an easy task the veil of time is a continuous mystery a fog that envelops the early history of humans and covers it with a shadow of Secrets riddles and enigmatic archaeological discoveries but what we can piece together is far from primitive there's so much more to the Paleolithic man than we dare to imagine it first a complex and natural view of the world and a perfected symbiosis of man in nature a true and right bond and perfect proof of early man's heightened awareness of the natural world as the Lascaux cave a masterpiece of Paleolithic cave painting and an important vision of the world that existed roughly seventeen millennia ago join us as we travel in the footsteps of our hunter-gatherer ancestors as we travel the enigmatic and wild world of the Upper Paleolithic in an attempt to understand the enigmatic world of the man that was the accidental discovery of the Lascaux cave the Lascaux cave lies in southwestern France in the Dordogne Department and near the village of Monte Ock this magnificent cave wasn't discovered until 1940 and then by chance and the discover was a dog on September 12th 1940 a dog by the name of robot fell into a hole while I lair a walk with its owner an 18 year-old boy named Marcel Ravi de Marcel and three of his teenage friends decided to descend into the hole in hopes of saving the dog and discovered that it was a 50 feet 15 meters deep shaft once inside the boys knew that they discovered something truly unique the walls of the cave system were covered with colorful and detailed depictions of animals of all kinds roughly ten days later the boys returned but this time with someone more knowledgeable they brought a bay unreel a Catholic priest and archaeologist as well as his colleagues and experts mr. Shen yay Denis Pei Rhoni and Jimbo Soni together they explored the cave embroil proceeded to make many detailed and valuable sketches of the cave and the paintings on the walls sadly the Lascaux cave was open to the public eight years later in 1948 and it was this that partly sealed its fate it became a sensation and received many visitors almost 1,200 per day the authorities and experts failed to see the consequences that this would have in the cave art the combined breaths of so many humans inside the cave each day and the carbon dioxide humidity and heat that they produced took its toll on the art and by 1955 many of them had suffered damage improper ventilation caused an increase in humidity and lichen and fungi appeared throughout the cave eventually in 1963 the cave was closed and great efforts were made to restore the art to its original state the numerous art that adorns the walls of Lascaux cave is seemingly the product of several generations of people it's clear that this cave was important either as a ritual sacred site or as a place of habitation either way it's clear that it was news for many years decades the art is dated to roughly 17,000 years before present in the early Magdalenian cultures of the Upper Paleolithic the Hall of Bowls the most prominent and most extraordinary section of the cave is called the Hall of balls seeing the art that's painted on these white calcite walls can truly be a breathtaking experience providing a deeper and meaningful bond with the world of our ancestors with the mythical primordial lives of the Paleolithic the main painted wall is 62 feet or 19 meters long and it measures 18 feet or five and a half meters at the entrance and 25 feet seven and a half metres at its widest point the high vaulted ceiling Dwarfs the observer the animals painted are on all a very large impressive scale some reaching 16.4 feet or five meters in length the largest image is that of Oryx a type of extinct wild cattle thus the name the Hall of bulls there are two rows of Oryx painted facing each other with stunning accuracy in their form there are two on one side and three on the opposite side around the two Oryx are painted ten wild horses and a mysterious creature with two vertical lines on its head which seems to be a misrepresented auric beneath the largest Oryx are six smaller deer painted in red and ochre as well as the solitary bear the only one in the entire cave many of the paintings in the hall seem elongated and distorted because many of them were painted to be observed from one particular position in the cave which gives the undistorted view the Hall of bulls and the magnificent display of art has been cited as one of the great achievements of mankind the axial gallery the next gallery is the XEL one it too is adorned with a host of animals painted in red yellow and black the majority of these shapes are those of wild horses with the central and most detailed figure being that of a female Orrock painted in black and shaded with red a horse and the Black Hawks are painted as falling this reflects common hunting method of the Paleolithic man in which animals were driven to jump off of cliffs to their death high above is an Oryx head all the art on the axial gallery required scaffolding or some other form of aid in order to paint the high ceiling besides the horses and Oryx there's also the representation of an enix as well as several Megalosaurus deer many of the animals were painted with stunning accuracy and the use of three-dimensional aspects there are also odd symbols including dots and connecting rectangles the latter could represent some sort of trap which was used in hunting these animals the black or ox is around 17 feet or five meters in size the passageway and the apse the part that connects the Hall of Bulls with those galleries called the nave and the apse is called the passageway but even though it's just that passageway it´ll is a great concentration of art giving it as much significance as a proper gallery sadly due to the air circulation the art is quite deteriorated it consists of 380 figures including 240 complete or partial depictions of animals like horses deer or ox bison and enix as well as 80 signs and 60 deteriorated and indeterminate images it also contains engravings in the rock notably those of numerous horses the next gallery is the apse which has a vaulted spherical ceiling that reminds one of an apse of a romanesque basilica thus the name the ceiling at its highest is around 9 feet or 2.7 meters in height and around 15 feet or 4.6 meters in diameter note that in the Paleolithic period when the engravings were made the ceiling was much higher and the art could only have been made while using scaffolding judging from the round almost ceremonial shape of this Hall as well as an incredible number of engraved drawings and the ceremonial artifacts found there it suggested that the apse was the core of Lascaux a center of the whole system it's noticeably less colorful than all the other art in the cave mostly because all the art is in the form of petroglyphs engravings on the walls it contains over a thousand figures displayed 500 animal depictions and 600 symbols and markings many of the animals are deer and the only reindeer depiction in the entire cave some of the unique engravings in the apse is the 6 foot 2 metre tall major stag the largest of the Alaska petroglyphs the musk ox panel the stag with the 13 arrows as well as the enigmatic carving called the large sorcerer which still remains largely an enigma the mystery that is the shaft one of the more mysterious positions of the Lascaux is the well or the shaft it has a nineteen point seven foot or six meter altitude difference from the apse and can only be reached by descending the shaft via a ladder this secluded at hidden part of the cave contains just three paintings all done in simple black pigment of manganese dioxide but so mysterious and captivating that they are by far some of the most significant works of prehistoric cave art the main image is that of a bison it seems to be in an attacking position and in front of him seemingly stuck is a man with an erect penis and that of a bird beside him is a dropped spear and a bird on a pole the Bison is seemingly depicted as being disemboweled or having a large and prominent vulva the whole image is highly symbolic and possibly depicts an important part of the belief of ancient Lascaux dwellers besides this scene is a mastery depiction of a woolly rhinoceros besides whom there are six dots in two parallel rows the Rhino seems much older than the Bison and the other pieces of art further attesting that Lascaux was the work of many generations the last image in the shaft is a crude depiction of a horse one amazing fine that was discovered in the sediments of the floor just below the image of the Bison in the Rhino is a red sandstone oil lamp belonging to the Paleolithic and the time of the paintings it was used a whole deer fat which provided light for the painting it looks like a large spoon which made it easy to hold while painting interestingly upon discovery it was found that the receptacle still contain remnants of burnt substances tests determined that these were the remnants of a Juniper wick which lit the lamp the nave and the chamber of felines the nave is the next gallery and it to display stunning works of art one of those popular velasco art pieces is the depiction of five swimming stags on the opposite wall our panels that display seven epochs the so called great black cow and the two opposing bison the latter painting known as the crossed bison is a stunning work of art showing a keen eye that master we presented perspective in three dimensions such an application of perspective was not seen in art again until the fifteenth century one of the deepest galleries in Lascaux is the enigmatic chamber of felines or feline diverted Quilliam it's roughly 82 feet or 25 meters long and quite difficult to reach there are more than 80 engravings there most of which are horses 29 of them nine bison depictions several FX's three stags and six feline forms the very important engraving in the chamber of felines is that of a horse which is represented from the front as if looking at the viewer the display of perspective is unparalleled for the prehistoric cave paintings and shows the great skill of the artist interestingly at the end of the narrow chamber are painted six dots in two parallel rows just like the ones in the shaft beside the Rhino there was an obvious meaning to them and alongside many repeating symbols throughout the Lascaux cave they could represent a means of written communication lost in time altogether the Lascaux cave contains almost six thousand figures animals symbols humans today the Lascaux cave is completely sealed off in hopes of preserving the art since the 2000s black fungi was spotted in the caves today only scientific experts are allowed to enter Lascaux and only a day or two per month the cave is subject to a strict conservation program which is currently containing the mold problem luckily the magnificence of the Lascaux cave can still be experienced in earnest several life-size replicas of the cave panels were created they are Lascaux two three and four peering beyond the veil of time time is merciless the earth cycle never stops and millenniums pass and fade out into oblivion the purpose of the Lascaux cave is lost with those same millenniums ritual evocative sacrificial we can never know for certain what we do know is that the world of the Paleolithic man was far from primitive these men were one with nature well aware of their position in the order of things and dependent on the gifts that nature offered as we contemplate this art we finally realized that the time has come for us to rekindle the flame of the past and to reconnect with the lost heritage of our most distant ancestors and seeing these complex beautiful and at times unsettling images we are thrust into a world about which we know very little a world about which we would have a completely wrong opinion

Channel: Blast World Mysteries

Views: 2,534

Rating: 4.9148936 out of 5

Keywords: discoveries, archaeological discoveries, archaeological, recent archaeological discoveries, most amazing recent archaeological discoveries, mysterious discoveries, recent, ancient discoveries, recent discoveries, scientific discoveries, amazing discoveries, ancient archaeological discoveries, mysterious archaeological discoveries, recent archaeological discoveries that could rewrite history, strange discoveries, bizarre discoveries

Id: xmrFiQZ-VEU

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 11 2020