March 12, 2019
When I woke up yesterday in Montignac and looked in the mirror, I thought, “Old.” Then I realized where I was—in the former home of Dr. Bouilhac, 
medicin to Louis XV, a 16th century home restored as a ten-room hotel. As I looked out the window on the town, I saw looming over us a 14th century castle, one that defended the town in days of yore. I felt younger.
Then, in comparison with the rest of the day, Montignac I was even younger—because much of this region, Pernigord, has been settled by homo sapiens for about as long as there have been homo sapiens—about 40,000 years—and the relics of humans (and predecessors–Neanderthals and Cro Magnons) abound. In fact, the caves at Lascaux (pronounced Lascow, a spelling adopted for a local beer), with its extensive art were one of the reasons Carolyn designed this trip—an opportunity to cross off one of the highest-ranking items on her bucket list.
The caves were rediscovered in September 1940 when four lads chased a dog into a hole that appeared when a tree toppled, re-exposing the entrance to the cave. For about 25 years, the cave owners and the state welcomed visitors—almost 1 million—until someone realized that the number of humans who visited reduced the possibility that the cave art would last. About 20 years later, the French government opened a meticulous recreation of about half the cave; five years ago, Lascaux IV opened, with about 95% of the cave reproduced in detail, in a setting cave-like, but one that will preserve the art in the original cave. The paintings are stunning.
The caves (new and old) are probably a mile long, with the best-known art in prehistory. I discovered there’s a lot of caves in the area, and a lot more art, but the Lascaux Caves are the best preserved and the best known. The humans who lived in the cave did so about 20,000 years ago, on the edge of carbon 14 dating, and painted what they knew: bison, cows, and horses, and some that no longer exist, like cave bears and mammoths.
The National Museum of Prehistory, about 25 miles away, had to be our second stop. It predates the discovery of the Lascaux caves by over 30 years, and was started because a number of the “finds” in the area were winding up in Berlin. In fact, the Kaiser himself bought something—which led to a patriotic (French) outcry and a new museum. Once housed in a local chateau, it’s now in a new building of its own. There were over 400,000 items in the collection, most of them from the local area, but some reproductions (Lucy from Ethiopia, the first upright walking fossil—I saw the original in Addis Ababa), and some from elsewhere in Europe, including Bulgaria. Many of the items are flakes, but making tools was one of the first “technological” breakthroughs of modern man.
When we got back, I felt much younger. How often does that happen?