Now that we have looked at questions of lighting/illumination in the painted caves of Europe it might be a good time to ask who actually it was holding those torches and lamps, or building those fires?
The discovery of footprints in the painted cave locations of ancient rock art, although relatively common, is always exciting because it provides a link to the ancient people who painted and/or experienced the rock art. Analysis of the footprints and trackways might provide some illumination toward their uses and intentions for this cave art.
Tuc D’Audoubert
Footprints in clay, Tuc D'Audoubert Cave, France. Internet photograph, public domain.
One well known example are the famous clay bison of Tuc D’Audoubert. They had apparently been the site of prehistoric visitation 14,000-years-ago. John Robinson described the discovery of footprints there. “We turned to the sunken cave floor behind us. We slid down to it and stood beside a flat clay floor. A few footprints of adults can be seen in the clay, but mainly the footprints of young children. Towards the rear wall of the cave, cut out of the floor is a hole in the four-inch-thick clay where a slab has been removed, the shape and size of one of the bison. Surely this was where the clay used to model the Bison had come from.” (Robinson)
Chauvet
Footprint, Chauvet Cave, France. Internet photograph, public domain.
Another well-known French painted cave with footprints is Chauvet. “Recent exploration of the Chauvet Cave near Vallon-Pont-d’Arc in southern France has yielded the oldest footprints of Homo sapiens sapiens and a cavern with a dozen new animal figures. The footprints appear to be those of an eight-year-old boy, according to prehistorian Michel-Alain Garcia of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Nanterre. They are between 20,000 and 30,000 years old, perhaps twice as old as those discovered previously at Aldene, Montespan, Niaux, Pech Merle, and other Upper Palaeolithic sites.” (Harrington 1999)
“Garcia estimates that the boy was about four-and-a-half feet tall, his feet more than eight inches long and three-and-a-half inches wide. First spotted in 1994 by Jean-Marie Chauvet, the cave’s discoverer, the footsteps stretch perhaps 150 feet and at times cross those of bears and wolves. The steps lead to the so-called room of skulls, where a number of bear skulls have been found. In a few places there is evidence that the boy slipped on the soft clay floor, though Garcia says the prints show the boy was not running, but walking normally. The boy appears at one point to have stopped to clean his torch, the charcoal from which has been dated to ca. 26,000 years ago. The prints from Chauvet Cave, like nearly all the footprints this far discovered in Palaeolithic caves, are from bare feet.” (Harrington 1999)
Ojo
Guareña Cave
“In 1969, members of Grupo Espeleologico Edelweiss discovered the Sala and Galerias de las Huallas in Ojo Guareña Cave system (Burgos, Spain). These contained hundreds of ancient human footprints, preserved in the soft sediment on the floor. These footprints represent the tracks of a small group of people who walked barefoot through these complex passages in the cave. Since 2012 optical laser scanning and digital photogrammetry have been used in Galerias dellas Huellas, in combination with GIS techniques, to obtain a model of the cave floor, where the footprints and their internal morphology can be observed in detail. We have identified over 1000 prehistoric human footprints and at least 18 individual distinct trackways through the passages, which could have been left by around 8-10 individuals.” (Ortega et al.) These trackways have been measured and analyzed and have all been attributed to adults.
“In the case of the tracks in Ojo Guareña, their singularity lies in the fact that they are a long way from the possible entrance point and without a direct relationship with symbolic spaces (rock art, burials, etc.), although these exist in other parts of the cave system. The large number of traces is unique, with over 1200 footprints of a minimum of 6 individuals but probably of between 9 and 11, according to the trackways that have been counted.” (Ortega et al.)
In these examples we see a group of people in Tuc d’Adoubert, many of
whom were children, in a situation that implies a relationship to the cave art
found there. A single young person’s footprints were found in Chauvet Cave.
And, in the Ojo Guareña Cave system the tracks of 8 – 10 individuals,
apparently totally unrelated to the cave art. These ancient footprints are not
as rare as we might have thought because of the preservation afforded by the
isolation of their locations.
Footprints of children in the caves may imply that they were being taken to some special, secret location for initiation rituals. In ethnographic literature we find that many cultures have traditional rituals initiating their children into adulthood, coming-of-age ceremonies. These are often secretive, and often held in special places, and for participants in early adolescence. This appears to be almost universal for tribal groups. What better place for such a ritual than a magnificently painted cave wall, dimly lit by flickering torches or the light of fat lamps?
The footprint of an isolated individual, thought to be a child would not seem to imply such a ritual. This could be an example of sight-seeing, of curiosity, wandering through the cave looking at the imagery, but it might also imply a situation somewhat like the ancestral Native American vision quest. A young person sent to experience something very daunting in search of a mystical experience.
Finally, in the case of Ojo Guareña there is no apparent connection between the cave art and the footprints. Whatever their motive for being in the cave it did not involve imagery. It could have still been for some sort of ritual, but if so, this was apparently by a group of people unrelated to the cave art, and also apparently uninterested in it.
Taking these examples in whole, it indicates to me that footprints found in the painted caves of Europe were made by people, pursuing their own ends, and for their own reasons, reasons which we may never share or understand. I feel it is enough that we appreciate the art however we understand it. I do not find it diminished in any way by not knowing what all of those people were there for.
NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.
REFERENCES:
Harrington, Spencer P. M., 1999, Human Footprints at Chauvet Cave, Archaeology, Volume 52, Number 5, September/October 1999, https://archive.archaeology.org/8898/newsbriefs/chauvet.html
Ortega, Ana I, Francisco Ruiz, Miguel A. Martin, Alfonso Benito-Calvo, Marco Vidal, Lucia Bermejo, and Theodoros Karampaglidis, Prehistoric Human Tracks in Ojo Guarena Cave System (Burgos, Spain): The Sala and Galeerias de las Huellas, Open Access, e Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), accessed 6/25/2021.
Robinson,
John, Cave Art: Bison of Tuc D’Audoubert – 14,000 Year Old Bull and Cow
Bison, http://www.bradshawfoundation.com,
Internet source, accessed 16 June 2021
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