Thwarted in my searches for live prehistoric cave women in Idaho, Nevada, & Utah, it became clear that Heidi & I should go to where some of the original prehistoric cave women lived in Europe for further research on their origin & habits.

Heidi & I flew into Paris & spent a couple nights there getting over our jet lag. On our 3rd day, we took a train south about 225 miles to Limoges, spent the night there, then took a train 50 miles south to Brive-la-Gaillarde, the largest town in the Dordogne area.

We had booked a five-day cave-art tour with a highly-recommended 68 year old Brit who lives nearby, and he met us in Brive. After the first afternoon with our guide, retired historian, anthropologist & Renaissance-man Steve Burman (there was one other person on our tour), I knew we were with someone who could help us to delve into the deepest roots of prehistoric cave art.

Steve had reserved rooms for us in a quaint 19th century mansion/hotel (quaint in this case meaning: no elevator, no windows, minimal lighting & a shower down the hall from our 4th floor large attic room. Apparently due to an earlier misunderstanding by the hotel, when Steve cancelled another room, we got the worst room in the hotel.

We were centrally located on the Vezere River in the village of Montignac, near the famous Cave of Lascaux cave art site. We visited many nearby caves , rock shelters, & museums in the next four days.

The original Lascaux cave was discovered in 1941 & became a major tourist attraction in the late 1940's with thousands of daily visitors. Unfortunately the heat & moisture from those visitors started to destroy the 17,000 year old art. The cavern was closed to the public and two nearby reproductions were built that closely reproduce the original art & cave experience. Construction is now underway on a third reproduction that will present the entire original Lascaux cave.


Steve shared with us that the area was first populated by Neanderthals around 50,000 years ago & then by our Homo sapiens ancestors about 40,000 years ago. The rock in the area is mostly limestone and the riverside cliffs provided lots of elevated ledges for folks to live on in “rock-shelters”. Humans did not live in the many caves & the art is often deep within the caves, in totally dark spaces. At the time the cave-art was painted, the climate was arctic, due to the ice age & the area was fairly densely populated with both humans & wildlife. The chief food source was reindeer, but a number of other, now-extinct, species are pictured in the art. A popular subject was Megaloceras, a giant deer that stood up to 10 feet high.

The art is sometimes very difficult to accurately date since the paints were mostly metallic compounds, but carbon 14 dating of wood & charcoal found deep inside the caves & near the art, yield dates from 25,000 to 13,000 years ago for sites in the area.

Although most of the cave art sites are privately owned, the French government tightly regulates visitation, to avoid repetition of the Caves of Lascaux fiasco that severely damaged much of the cave art there. In some caves, visitors are limited to fewer than 200 people daily & the caves are closed for much of the year.

Our first cave, Grotte de Rouffignac, aka The Cave of 100 Mammoths, is accessed by a small electric tram that travels ½ kilometer inside the cave to where the spectacular art was often incised in soft clay on the surface of the limestone, or in harder areas, painted with either Red Ochre (iron oxide) or pyrolusite (black manganese dioxide). This cave was a tourist attraction in the 1500’s, and many pieces of art are also defaced by dates or signatures.

(you can click on the photos to make them larger)


The next day, we toured medieval Sarlat, the second-largest town in the area, and the place where most cave art tourists stay, due to its concentration of small hotels, B&B’s, & eateries. The Dordogne area is also famous for its Pate from force-fed ducks. In the Sarlat market you can pick up a whole huge duck liver for about $20.00 per pound.

We then drove south into the Dordogne Valley to the Grotte De Cougnac caves. Small groups, at half-hour intervals, tour one cave that is a fantasy of sparkling calcite stalactites & stalagmites. Then a short walk takes you into a similar, but not as sparkly cave with some noteworthy art. Some of the best art is in a large chamber with many stalactites & stalagmites, some of which were broken off to provide better views of the art 20,000 years ago, or to hold lamps. Also some show wear marks that may indicate they were banged on to produce music.

Day 3 we toured both Lascaux 2 & 3 and were awed by the large and spectacular images that when first painted around 17,000 years ago, obviously took a huge effort, including construction of scaffolds. There are 364 paintings of horses as well as 90 paintings of stags. Also represented are cattle and bison, each representing about 5% of the images. A smattering of other images include seven felines, a bird, a bear, a rhinoceros, and a human.


Morning of Day 4 we went to the National Museum of Prehistory in nearby Les Eyziers to see their huge collection of cave artifacts. They do have a statue that offers a concept of how cavemen looked, but they didn’t have any cavewoman representations.

They also have a collection of ancient carvings, which include a copy of an 18”� high statue of a 25,000 year old prehistoric cavewoman. The original was found in the area. That statue deeply conflicted with my image of how prehistoric cavewomen looked, and I refused to accept it as an accurate representation.

I was impressed with their collection of Neanderthal "Hand-axes."

Then we took a short drive & hiked up to another cave, Font de Gaume, with still more wonderful art. This site limits visitors to 200 daily and is very difficult to get tickets for. Steve had booked our tickets back in January.


Finally late-afternoon of day 4, we found some joyful information about prehistoric cave women. At the Cap Blanc rock-shelter site, large well-done images, mostly of horses, are partly-sculpted out of the limestone. Archaeologists found a young woman’s bones buried just below a beautiful horse sculpture. She had apparently died of natural causes and had been buried with her rock sculpture tools Anthropologists recreated her figure in both a bust & a painting. I felt much better about the local prehistoric cavewomen.

After touring a now abandoned, small medieval village, that is perched on a cliff above the Vizere River & below an abandoned castle on the morning of day 5, we picked up a Euro-rental car and set off on our long & scenic drive to the village of Vallon-Pont-d’Arc above the Ardeche River near Avignon. Most of the first day's drive was on a French version of our interstate highways. It was easy driving on great roads, with a way cool bridge along the way. The "truck-stops" along these highways usually include a pastry shop along with the usual "truck-stop" amenities.

Much more to come later!