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Cave art in Perigord.............
Carl Semencic (semencic@pipeline.com)
19 Jan 1995 09:51:54 -0500
I picked up today's NY Times and on the front page there is this huge
article about a newly discovered cave in France. It's full of 20,000 year
old artwork and they say it might be the best one yet.
I've been through these caves and I really enjoy them. But, come to think
of it (and I don't know why this hasn't occurred to me before) there are no
depictions of dogs in any of them, are there? Much of the art at places
like Cambarell, Font de Gaume, etc. is 12ish thousand years old.
Wouldn't we have expected dogs?
After all, if dogs crossed the berring straights land bridge with man
12,000 years ago (this is still the conservative, sonventional wisdom,
isn't it), we would expect dogs in France at that time too, wouldn't we?
And if many of these depictions are of hunting scenes, wouldn't we expect
dogs to have been involved?
Imagine, in this new cave, they have the skull of a cave bear that had been
placed on a stone slab, in front of depictions of bears! Jeeeez!
The Times article says they've found the first depiction of a "panther". I
am certain I saw the depiction of just such a feline on the wall deep into
Cambarel, along with a bear, etc.
Is anyone on line involved in researching any of these caves?
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