Bernifal Grotto

Coordinates: 44 ° 55 ′ 52 ″  N , 1 ° 4 ′ 3 ″  E

Privately owned but open to the public, Bernifal Grotto is a cave in the municipality of Meyrals in the Dordogne department , France . It contains rock carvings and engravings from the Magdalenian and belongs to the Franco-Cantabrian cave art in the Vézère valley . The cave has been recognized as a monument historique since 1904 . Along with other prehistoric caves in the Vézère Valley Caves of the Bernifal belongs since 1979 to the World Heritage of UNESCO .

Entrance to the cave

location

The hamlet of Bernifal is located on the left side of the valley slope of the Petite Beune , a little below the property and the mill of Viel Mouly . The cave can be reached via the D 47 from Sarlat to Les Eyzies . From the parking lot to the cave there is then another 500 meters. The cave is about 20 meters above the valley level.

history

The cave was, so to speak, “rediscovered” in 1902 by Denis Peyrony . He had penetrated through an opening in the roof of the cave. Peyrony was not the first visitor, as there were several graffiti on the walls. But he was the first to notice the rock paintings and the engravings. Louis Capitan , Henri Breuil, and Peyrony made a quick study that was published in 1903. The cave was then thoroughly examined in 1928 by Henri Breuil, and later by André Leroi-Gourhan . In 1935 Peyrony exposed the buried original entrance again. Only in the 1970s was a mammoth discovered again in the roof of a 'chimney'.

Structure of the cave

The cave has a zigzag-like structure and, with its approximately 90 meter long longitudinal axis, strokes in a north-west-south-east direction. The bedrock is the flat limestone of the Coniacium . It consists of two larger halls connected by a low and very narrow passage. Hall 1 is about 22 meters long and has a maximum height of 8 meters and a width of around 4 to 5 meters. The passage is only one meter wide and one meter high. Hall 2 can in turn be divided into three sections: a 12 meter long and 5 meter wide and 5 to 8 meter high front section, followed by a 15 meter long and only 3 meter wide corridor and the 20 meter long and 6 meter wide final section. Six smaller side corridors ( French: diverticules ) lead from the second hall , which are often very narrow and difficult to walk through . Images were even placed in these side aisles. There are also two small alcoves, apsidal bulges in the second room , some of which have also been decorated. The third (approx. 10 meters long) and the final side corridor on the east side of room 2 are oriented approximately in a north-east-south-west direction.

The cave floor drops slightly from the entrance, then drops suddenly by three meters in the last third and then tapers off flat again in the final part. The end of the cave is 36 meters below the level of the entrance. The walls are covered by various layers of calcite that have been transformed into white moon milk in places . The covers are mostly older than the pictures, but can occasionally cover them up. The cave also has very beautiful stalactite formations on the ceiling, colored orange by iron oxides, and also some stalagmites growing towards the stalactites .

Author of the cave paintings

For a long time, science assumed that men had artistically implemented their hunting experiences in the paintings, but there was no evidence for this. The archaeologist Dean Snow from Pennsylvania State University analyzed handprints from eight French and Spanish Stone Age caves, including the Bernifal grotto, and found that around three quarters of all colored hands are from women, and there are also numerous handprints from children and adolescents.

Motifs of the cave paintings

tectiform sign

Found burins and blades

The cave contains 110 illustrations, paintings and engravings are equally represented. The majority of the pictures are in the passage and in the alcoves as well as in room 2, as the calcite coating is not so strong here. Unevenness in the rock was cleverly exploited to give the works of art a three-dimensional effect.

Animals

The images in the Grotte de Bernifal are dominated by mammoths , similar to those in the Rouffignac cave - they make up about half of the paintings. The painted animal images can be broken down as follows:

• 24 mammoths
• 8 wild horses , including a donkey
• 7 cattle ( bison and aurochs )
• 2 deer-like
• 9 unidentifiable animals

What is striking in the Grotte de Bernifal is the absence of the woolly rhinoceros , which usually accompanies these animals in the other mammoth caves.

People

A human head appears in one of the side passages, scratches on the nose, eye and mouth can be seen. Also worth mentioning is a possible saiga antelope . A hand negative in black is also worth mentioning.

Tectiform characters

In addition to the animal images, 51 different symbols were also attached. Very often these are so-called tectiform (house-shaped) images, a total of 13 of these characters were recognized. Their shape resembles a house, from the ridge of which the two halves of the roof seem to extend; their real meaning is not known. Twelve of the tectiform signs were scratched and only one painted. The engraved tectiform symbols can appear individually, in pairs or in association with mammoths. The painted tectiform symbol consists of many small, juxtaposed lines ( pointillism ); it is easy to see in infrared light .

Others

In addition to the tectiform signs, there are also simple lines and dots, which were executed either individually, in the form of a ribbon or in a row.

Tool finds

Among the stone artifacts were numerous burins and blades.

Age

Bernifal was not directly dated. One of the painted mammoths is almost identical to a mammoth in Rouffignac - it may even have been created by the same artist. This stylistic relationship with Rouffignac (style IV according to Leroi-Gourhan) suggests the same age for Bernifal, ie Upper Magdalenian , approx. 12,000 years BC. Chr.

Caves in the vicinity

In the vicinity of the hamlet of Bernifal there are further caves and living spaces :

• On the same side of the river is the 'Cave of the Wisent' ( Grotte du Bison ) with two hand-painted negatives and engravings that are difficult to date.
• Also worth mentioning is the Sous-Grand-Lac cave, which was discovered in 1969 and examined more closely by G. and B. Delluc and Leroi-Gourhan; it contains various engravings, including a human representation which is very similar to the incised drawing in Saint-Cirq-du-Bugue and is probably the same age.
• Further out of the valley follows the La Calévie cave , which was discovered by Peyrony in 1903 and examined by Breuil. It was inhabited in the Magdalenian and Bronze Age. It shows mainly 15,000 year old wild horses and a bison modeled from clay.
• Finally, there is the Vielmouly II cave with unidentifiable remains of pictures and engravings.
• Cazelle ( Aurignacien and Magdalenian), Crabillat and Barry could be named as living places .

literature

• Aubarbier, Jean Luc, Binet, Michel, Bouchard, Jean Pierre. & Guichard, Geneviève: Aimer la préhistoire en Périgord . Éditions Ouest-France, 1991, ISBN 2-7373-0786-4 .
• Delluc, Brigitte & Gilles, Roussot, Alain & Roussot-Larroque, Julia: Connaître la préhistoire en Périgord . Éditions SUD-OUEST, 1990, ISBN 2-87901-048-9 .

Web links

• Bernifal on the website of the Pôle International de la Préhistoire (French)
• Grotte de Bernifal - photos + information (French)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Grotte de Bernifal, Meyrals in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
2. ↑ Entry on the website of the UNESCO World Heritage Center ( English and French ).
3. ↑ Capitan, L., Breuil H., Peyrony D .: Les figures gravées à l'époque paleolithique sur les parois de la grotte de Bernifal (Dordogne). Comptes-rendus des séances de l'année . In: Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 47e année, No. 3 . 1903, p. 219-230 .
4. ↑ Jacqueline Jouanel: Histoire de Meyrals, des origines à la Révolution. Edition Récéad 2007
5. ↑ Hubert Filser: Strong women. Common ideas about the Stone Age are supposed to justify today's gender roles. The 'weaker sex' gathered berries, while the brave guys did heroic deeds on the hunt. The problem with that: it's not true. Women were once good hunters and as strong as men. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, No. 28, 3./4. February 2018, p. 34.
6. ↑ Thorwald Ewe: image of science online - booklet archive. (No longer available online.) In: bildderwissenschaft.de. July 2014, archived from the original on April 8, 2018 ; accessed on April 8, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.