Word: montignac
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Dates: during 1941-1941
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Several months ago the Montignac cavern was discovered by five striplings whose archeological adventuring had been encouraged by a retired schoolmaster named Laval. Its entrance was a vertical shaft which had long ago been filled so that cattle would not fall in. Townsfolk, as usual, were skeptical and hoax-wary over the boys' reports...
...Neanderthalers had no art. The first artists were the Cro-Magnon men, whose earliest culture-period is called the Aurignacian. The newfound cave at Montignac represents this glimmering dawn-culture on the vastest scale yet found. Its significance, says U.S. Prehistorian George Grant MacCurdy, is that the appearance of art "marks a distinct epoch in mental evolution." The Abbe Breuil calls the Montignac cave "the Sistine Chapel of Aurignacian...
...earliest cave pictures were not painted but scratched on walls with sharpened flints. Profiles were absolute with but single fore and hind legs, and lacking were such details as hooves, eyes, hair and nostrils. But as Aurignacian scratching developed into painting, remarkable sophistication of draftsmanship appeared. In the Montignac group, stiffness of profile has relaxed and action abounds - the beasts run, leap, browse, swim, lie down, chew their cuds. The head of an ancient long-horned cow (see cut) displays an excellent eye and nostril, subtle shading and dappling. To the Paleolithic artist, the more realistic was his picture...
...Montignac cave, many tortured galleries still remain unexplored, many scratched figures still undeciphered. "There may yet be many surprises in store," observes Breuil, who knows that cave paintings are sometimes hidden a half-mile from the entrances. There may also be many undiscovered Paleolithic caves on both slopes of the Pyrenees. Today archeologists are more eager than ever to continue their explorations, but they fear that for years to come the prizes will fall only to French schoolboys...
...This phrase is an echo from the great cave at Altamira, Spain, where the Marquis of Sautuola first found and recognized prehistoric paintings in 1879. Altamira is commonly called "the Sistine Chapel of Magdelanian art," representing a Paleolithic culture about 10,000 years later than Montignac...