I watched a Werner Herzog documentary the other night titled Cave of Forgotten Dreams. This amazing documentary gives unprecedented access to Chauvet Cave, a cave in France discovered in late 1994, which contains the oldest known cave paintings in the world.
The paintings have been dated back between 30,000 and 32,000 years using radiocarbon dating. The discovery and documentation of the paintings is a remarkable enough subject for a documentary, but what makes the film even more fascinating is knowing that very few people have been allowed access to the cave. Only top scientists and researchers have been allowed inside as it is believed that even something as simple as human breath may damage the paintings. Herzog and his crew were allowed in with special lights that wouldn’t harm the paintings and they were forced to walk and film in single file so they did not veer off the narrow metal grates where people are allowed to step.
The paintings themselves are stunning. In many cases, the artists actually utilized the curves of the cave walls to produce 3-D paintings that appear to be in motion. A combination of a bison and the lower half of a woman can be found, an exceptional and significant painting for the time period. A series of red dots in one section of the cave was discovered to be created from the palm prints of a 6 foot tall man with a crooked pinky finger. There are also the breathtaking horses in the picture attached to this blog post. Additionally, tons of fossils can be found, mostly of the now extinct cave bears that used to hibernate there, along with scratch marks and footprints.
It’s obvious by the wait list that Cave of Forgotten Dreams is quite popular, but you don’t have to wait to see the paintings for yourself. A quick search for “chauvet cave” in the catalog will bring up many excellent pictorial titles currently in stock, or you can explore the cave online:
Books
Chauvet Cave: The Art of Earliest Times
Dawn of Art: The Chauvet Cave: The Oldest Known Paintings in the World
Painters of the Caves
This one’s for the young ones; if you want to get your kids excited about Chauvet Cave, this would be an excellent book to pick up.
Websites and Articles
The Cave Art Paintings of Chauvet Cave
Links to a gallery of the paintings, information about the film, articles from folks that have actually been there, and much more.
The Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc
The cave’s official website with an interactive map of the large cave and tons of background info.
Chauvet Cave
Background on the cave from an art history perspective.
“Entering Darkness” by Sam Anderson
A great article from the June 12, 2011 New York Times Magazine about seeing Herzog’s documentary for the first time. This article (and many more!) are available from your home with your library card number via our online databases. I found this one in General OneFile. Unsure about how to use the databases? Ask a Librarian!
Werner Herzog: Cave of Forgotten Dreams
This is a link to Herzog’s own website where the documentary is discussed at length.
Posted by Bonnie, a second floor librarian
