Whatever it is, they are communicating with future generations in various ways through their sketches. We are not certain what their intention was and whether there is any meaning behind it. Their abstract creations are open to all kind of interpretations. I wondered why they went to so much trouble to make these marks? Was it simple curiosity, or some kind of spiritual endeavour? We can only speculate and may never have a definitive answer They were perfect humans, as intelligent and capable as people today, but their world and surroundings were very simple. These revelations show the intellectual and technical abilities of those prehistoric artists. There are no colour paintings in this cave, but traces of dye indicate that they may have originally been in colour. The discovery was an explosive moment in the world of prehistory, revealing nearly 800 drawings, which could be divided into over 100 distinct sets. Scientists officially discovered the cave in 1901. This means that the artists had to crawl inside the cave in absolute darkness holding some kind of lighting in order to make their engravings. It had been excavated and enlarged to make it possible for visitors to walk through more easily. The guide told us that the height of the original cave was very low. We walked through a very narrow passage approximately 1 metre wide. The cave contains prehistoric drawings of animals and symbols on sandy uneven walls. The cave used to be inhabited by Cro-Magnon people (described by scientists as early modern humans) approximately 11,000 – 13,000 years ago. Having spent the night in the city of Sarlat, my journey to the cave of Combarelles near the small town of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac (pictured above), in the heart of the Vézère Valley, took only 20 minutes. The mystery of our life on earth gets even more complicated with new findings going back to 1.7 million years. We can study the marks left by our ancestors and it might be a gateway to the future and understanding our complex universe. We are often so occupied in our day-to-day routines, so busy worrying about paying bills and other ordinary matters that we forget about where we came from. I was very curious to find out about the past. I was looking to connect with those people who created the art works in the Vézère Valley. This trip meant something different to me. The story of the caves captured my mind and inspired me to come back to the area and see them with my own eyes. During my first visit, I had been told about prehistoric caves and paintings. I landed at Brive airport in the Dordogne valley for the second time in a year.
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