MAN, THE HUNTER

Evening Star, Issue 19407, 16 November 1926, Page 1

MAN, THE HUNTER

CAVES OF THE PYRENEES The caves in the Dordogne region are now so well known that charabancs filled with American tourists make a daily round of them during the summer, while the far more interesting group in the Pyrenees remains almost unknown (writes a correspondent of ‘The Times’). Their interest lies in the evidences of human life that have been miraculously preserved through two or three millenniums. Wnere eke in the world can we look for the prints of human feet and human, fingers still preserving the ridge prints of the skin; clay statuary with the finger, prints still fresh upon them; evidences of daily life, such as the skulls of the cave bear robbed of their fangs by the people whose little naked footprints are all about the skeletons?- ' ‘ Certainly in no museum, even ira museum could be built to endure five times longer than the Pyramids. For in the recesses of these caves, half a mile or more from- the entrance, neither the temperature nor the dampness ever varies, no current of air ever.* blows, and the limestone has distilled through the centuries a thin veneer , of transparent stalagmite which has preserved everything under a sheet of imperishable glaze. To penetrate into the .most interesting calls for the equipment of an athlete: you must navigate a boat to reach the entrance; you’must do part of the journey on hands and knee ; s, and wriggle through the narrowest passages under the curse of the serpent. You count yourself lucky if you come out 'without scalp wounds; caked'from head to foot with prehistoric mud, you will certainly not, be looking your best. With the‘object of popularising the Pyrenean caves an expedition organised by Count Begouen, who is in the forefront of prehistoric studies in France, visited tne famous cave of Niaux three miles from Tarascon in the Ariege, with a large number of journalists and persons interested in the science of pre-history. This cave Ives high above the road, and is entered through a hole just large enough to admit a human body.. Thereafter n widens into a high tunnel, the ancienl course of a subterranean river fed by the melting glaciers of a past age, but now dry throughout'the year._ It calli for no. athletic feats, for it follows' a straight course into the mountain for nearly a mile, through lofty, cathedrallike halls festooned with crystal stalactites, which here and there have grown into majestic columns'that support . the roof. In the deepest recess, he the paintings of animals now exjnnct that ranged these highlands when the climate was sub-Arctic. There are reindeer and bison and • wild horse, .all drawn in, imperishable manganese and ochre. Doubtless the object was magical; many of the bison bear on their flanks assegais pointed at the heart, to conjure a successful hunting., belong to the Magdaleniau Period, which cannot have been less than 20,000 years ago, and is more likely to be nearly 30,000. Under no shorter period could all tine flora and fauna have changed so completely. , , , , After the inevitable Bengal fires had been lighted and volumes.or smoke Avere rolling heavily among the stalactites, the party emerged into the sunshine of midsummer; it,' was. like warkiflg from a refrigerator into a baker s oven, and yet in the still atmosphere of the cavern no one had toll told. The French papers were as full of descriptive articles' as if this museum or -tqe oldest pictorial art in the world had just been discovered; the curious feature about Niaux is that, though the cave was known and visited for two centuries, it was not until September 21, 1906, that Major Mollard noticed the paintings while lie was making a plan of the cavern. They are perhaps the finest paintings from the artistic standpoint that have yet been discovered.