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Chauvet Cave Through the Mind of a Sculptor
Visit to the Chauvet Cave in 2001 by John Robinson
Language
The Bear Clan couldn’t have survived without possessing a sophisticated language, let alone have created art. I suspect that the invention of language marked the birth of Cro Magnon 150,000 years ago in Africa. Storytelling, music, singing, and dancing are all offshoots of language.
Extra thick woollen socks
It was with these thoughts in my head that I arrived at the door of the Cave. I pulled on some extra thick woollen socks in case we needed to leave the plastic pathway and walk across the needle sharp calcite. I selected a pair of oversize rubber slippers that are kept at the entrance so that no new pollen is carried down into the cave.
I was back!
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Switching on my helmet light I followed Jean down the slopping floor of the rabbit hole tunnel on all fours to the wellhead, clipped on the anti-fall rope and climbed down the thirty foot ladder into the depth of the cave. I was back!
The cave had grown
On reaching the bottom of the ladder my immediate reaction was that the cave had grown in size, everything seemed more spacious than I had remembered. Perhaps this was because I was more relaxed and not quite so much adrenaline was pumping through my veins as had been on my first visit. I looked around at the beautiful stalactites and stalagmites and was amazed by how big the chamber actually was.
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Feeling you get in an aquarium
Over the last two years the engineers have been very busy. I could see the new steel walkways zigzagging away into the dark. They are doing a superb job and the modern shiny steel gave me the same kind of feeling I get in an aquarium when looking through the glass at the water world of fish. Somehow the walkways separated me from the world of the Bear Clan.
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Oldest man made step
Crouching low we scrambled through the pinch that separated us from the next chamber. There is a two-foot drop down from thispassageway into the chamber and Chauvet man has carefully placed a large stone step there to make it easier.
The stone hasn’t fallen by chance from the ceiling, as is the case of the Bear Skull Altar, it had been deliberately placed there.
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