Villars cave

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Villars cave

Blue horse - Le petit cheval bleu

Blue horse - Le petit cheval bleu

Location: Municipality Villars , department Dordogne , France
Height : 170  m
Geographic
location:
45 ° 26 '32.1 "  N , 0 ° 47' 6.6"  E Coordinates: 45 ° 26 '32.1 "  N , 0 ° 47' 6.6"  E
Villars Cave (Dordogne)
Villars cave
Geology: Oolite Limestone - Upper Bajoc
Type: Karst cave - several halls connected by corridors
Discovery: 1953
Overall length: 13 km
Length of the show
cave area:
600 m
Website: http://grotte-villars.com

The Villars Cave , French Grotte de Villars or Grotte du Cluzeau , is a cave in the area of ​​the municipality of Villars in the Dordogne department in France . Along with the Rouffignac cave, it is the largest cave system in the Dordogne department and, in addition to limestone concretions, contains cave paintings and incised drawings from the Lower Magdalenian region .

Geography and geology

The two entrances to the cave, on the right the original, now closed entrance

The Villars Cave is 3.5 kilometers northeast of Villars (as the crow flies), around 500 meters northeast of the hamlet of Le Cluzeau . It can be reached via the D 82 from Villars to Saint-Saud-Lacoussière , junction at the hamlet of Le Cluzeau . Its entrance is on the left slope of the Ruisseau de l'Étang Rompu , a left tributary of the Trincou , at around 170 meters above sea ​​level . The cave is a typical karst cave that was formed in the Jurassic oolite limestone of the Upper Bajoc . On the other side of the valley, a south-east trending fault runs through the Jura limestone; it is likely to have a causal connection with the cave system, which was released from the rock by underground watercourses in the course of the Quaternary under the influence of organically formed carbonic acid .

discovery

The cave was discovered by members of the Spéleo-Club de Périgueux at the end of 1953 , after they became aware of a strong steam leak at a burrow. In 1956, the first scratch marks from cave bears were noticed. The cave paintings fell on Pierre Vidal, a member of the speleological association, but only years later in December 1957. The works of art were then examined and appraised by the Abbé Henri Breuil . In 1959 the cave was opened to visitors.

In 1958, Breuil and François Bordes worked scientifically in the Villars Cave with the Abbé Glory, followed by André Leroi-Gourhan in 1959 and Brigitte and Gilles Delluc in 1970.

Description of the cave

Map of the part of the cave open for the visit with the individual rooms (in English)

The part of the cave that is open to visitors is around 600 meters long and consists of three halls connected by corridors. The cave system continues beyond that and has a total passage length of over 13 kilometers distributed over several levels. This makes them the largest known cave system in the Dordogne department, along with the Rouffignac cave.

The entrance area of ​​the cave impresses with its diverse karst features such as stalactites and stalagmites , columns, pendants of various shapes, wall coverings, macaroni (unlike stalactites, they are hollow inside) and so-called holy water basins ( French gours ).

A steep stone staircase, not suitable for wheelchair users, leads down to today's entrance, which is about 10 meters further northwest and a little below the original entrance. A 40-meter-long access corridor (galerie d'accés) stretches south-south-east to the crossroads (carrefour), where the cave system branches into three branches. The right branch is a combined corridor-hall system, about 130 meters long, oriented to the southeast. It consists of the holy water basin hall (salle des bénitiers), the passage (le passage) and the large balcony (grand balcon) with the large stalagmite at the end. The holy water basin hall continues to the northwest into the chaos hall (salle du chaos). The left branch has two halls facing north-east and north-north-east, the latter having larger bulges facing south-east: the 10-meter-long candle hall (salle des cierges) and the 30-meter-long painting room (salle des peintures), at the rear of which is located the exit is located. A third corridor system, 50 meters long, branches off to the south-east in front of the candle hall , which swings into the south-south-east direction behind the scratch-marks hall (salle des griffades) and meets the right branch again in front of the large balcony .

Access corridor

In the access corridor there are numerous scratches from cave bears on the right side of the wall. Here and there you can observe painted dots and lines, which can appear singly or in groups.

Holy Water Basin Hall

The 10 meter large holy water basin hall is directly connected to the intersection via a sloping ramp. In addition to very beautiful stalactites and stalagmites, it is characterized by two large sintered lime basins that resemble holy water basins; hence the name.

Chaos Hall

In the 30-meter-long and up to 15-meter-wide Chaos Hall, the ceiling collapsed, and huge chunks and blocks of lime are now randomly jumbled together. Very massive limestone concretions have formed over it. The resulting chaos can be viewed very nicely from the west end of the higher holy water room.

Candle hall

In addition to dots and lines, the candle hall contains some very beautiful figurative representations such as B. a 40 centimeter bison, a horse's head and a cattle. The candle hall ends with a narrow passage that leads to the painting room. This passage has been widened for easier access. Unfortunately, some very beautiful concretions had to be destroyed for this.

Painting room

Most of the most beautiful cave paintings can be seen in the painting room, including the horse fresco (la fresque de chevaux), the blue horse (le petit cheval bleu) and humans and bison (l'homme et le bison). It also contains a large number of limestone concretions, some of which have grown together.

Finds

Sinter deposits on Upper Bajoc oolite at the cave entrance. Such deposits form the protective coating of the paintings inside the cave.

A total of around 30 wall paintings, up to 50 centimeters in size, were discovered that were executed with black manganese oxide mixed in animal fat . Most of these depictions, however, have a blue tint due to a milky calcite coating, for example the famous blue horse of Villars (this calcite coating protected the paintings, so the Villars cave, unlike Lascaux, has no problems with fungal attack etc.). There are also some incised drawings, as well as schematized female figures, red dots painted with ocher colors and mostly difficult to interpret geometric symbols such as bars, crosses and symbols reinforced with spikes. In addition to horses , cattle-like animals , bison , ibex and a deer's head , a human figure attacked by a bison was depicted , similar to the Lascaux fountain scene .

The Cro-Magnon people have left some traces, for example several concretions were knocked over and destroyed, and tools were occasionally left lying around (including flint chippings , bone fragments - mainly from reindeer -, paint residues of ocher and manganese oxide and the associated paint pots made of bowl-shaped calcareous concretions).

Dating

According to Leroi-Gourhan, the works of art can be stylistically assigned to the second period of Style III and consequently come from the older Magdalenian period . They should therefore be around 17,000 years old.

According to Michel Genty, an absolute age dating of a burnt tooth found in a fireplace below the human and bison scene resulted in 18,000 years BP .

The stylistic correspondence of the human and bison scene with similar depictions in Lascaux and Roc-de-Sers also points to the period 18,000 to 17,000 years BP.

The cave itself is of course much older than its former visitors. Using the uranium-thorium method, Dominique Genty dated a 1.50 meter long stalagmite from the lower level of the cave to the period 83,100 to 31,800 years BP or 81,100 to 29,800 BC. Chr. The minimum age of the Stalagmitenwachstums in the cave therefore falls within the start of Weichselian . The stalagmite has seven discontinuities D1 to D7, three of which represent a growth stop. In particular, the halt in growth from 65400 to 59000 BC Chr. Is very distinctive and indicates a very cold and dry period. It correlates with the Heinrich event . The other two discontinuities show very humid conditions in which the cave was under water. The measured δ 13 C curve is very detailed and confirms the results of the ice cores from Greenland . In addition, it can be used to achieve a very high level of accuracy in determining the age of the Dansgaard-Oeschger events DO6 to DO20 . The event DO12 around 44000 to 43000 BC. Chr. Is very clearly pronounced, whereby the growth rates at that time are already similar to today's. The δ 18 O values are quite comparable with the results from the Soreq cave in Israel and other records from the marine area.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Leroi-Gourhan, A .: Préhistoire de l'art occidental . Ed .: Citadelles et Mazenod. Paris 1995.
  2. Quotation on the website of www.hominidés.com
  3. ^ Genty, Dominique et al .: Precise dating of Dansgaard – Oeschger climate oscillations in western Europe from stalagmite data . In: Nature . tape 421 , 2003, p. 833-837 .

Web links

literature

  • Delluc, B. & Delluc, G .: La grotte ornée de Villars (Dordogne) . In: Gallia-Préhistoire . 17, pp. 1-67, 1974.