Richard W. Wise, Author

 

by Richard W. Wise 

 

Like Chauvet, at Lascaux, most of the works are outlined in black. At Chauvet, the artists used charcoal. At Lascaux and many of the caves surrounding Les Eyzes de Tayac, artists usually used a crayon of Magnesium dioxide. It appears that the artist began with the line of the back.

 

What is amazing is how these elegant lines which so beautifully define the animals' shape were drawn with a single uninterrupted stroke. Using these techniques on cave walls it is not possible to erase and start over. At Lascaux, another technique was used. The outlines were made using a masking/blowing technique, an early form of spray painting.
 
The ubiquitous negative handprints found at both Chauvet and Lascaux are also found in caves throughout the world including Australia, Indonesia, and the American Southwest. The artist either fills his mouth with powdered charcoal or ochre and using his hand---or perhaps that of another---as a stencil blows the powder onto the wall or worked with a primitive blowpipe. Many of these prints appear to have been created by women. Handprints can be found at both Chauvet and Lascaux with 15,000 years between them. 
 
The lyrical elegance and mastery of line remind me of Matisse or the Suma-e artists of Japan. How many times must this stroke have been drawn, and meticulously practiced to reach this level of perfection? Was it practiced in sand or with a graver on flat pieces of shale or perhaps on a deerskin stretched across a frame as was done by native Americans in the Southwest?
 

The drawings at Lascaux were created using, primarily, a range of ochres (iron oxides) Drawings or paintings in red ochre are found all over the world. Red ochre was also smeared on the bodies of the dead in both Neanderthal and Cro Magnon burials. The hue can be quite saturated. Red is one of the first colors to be recognized and named in primitive cultures. Perhaps—surprise, surprise— the color of blood had symbolic meaning.

 

Blood red ochre could be created by heating yellow ochre to approximately1,000 C. It passes through yellowish brown to purple, blood red, and finally black. The palate was quite sophisticated. Other colors such as, umber and burnt umber were also used.

 

Heating technology was also used to create glues and to improve the working characteristics of flint tools.
 
Next: The Portrait at Bernifal. CLICK HERE

 
By Richard W. Wise
©2022

 Did I say seven? More like ten days in Southern France devoted to cave art. From Vallon Pont d'Arc to Les Eyzes de Tayak, we've visited Chauvet, Bernifal, Lascaux, Font de Gaume, Cougnac, Rouffignac and Abri du Cap Blanc. The first cave, Chauvet, one of the most important, is also the oldest dating 33-36,000 BP. The caves clustered around Les Eyzes are all from the Magdalenian Period 24-17,000 BP. Our travels covered about five hundred miles.
 
The paintings at Chauvet are true marvels. Out The art is about predators not the grazing animals typical of the caves at Les Eyzes. Cave lions, mammoth, cave bears and wholly rhinoceroses make up 65% of the art.
 
A brace of lions, visible only to the withers—heads outstretched—stalking the primeval taiga. Horses—each an individual—whiney and neigh. Below them, a pair of Wooly Rhinos meet horn-to-horn. Another group of stacked Rhino, the first six back lines only, or is it a single multi-legged proto-futurist animal, shown in multiple poses, shaking his horned head?
 
Most of what is seen at Chauvet are charcoal drawings. Much easier to date than later works where the artists used a mineral, Magnesium dioxide to draw the black outlines. The age of the oldest drawings was recalibrated in 2020 to 36,500 BP. 
 
The images portrayed are sophisticated. They have a freshness and originality lacking in the later works in Lascaux and Altamira There is some evidence of stylization, but it is limited. Is it any wonder that its discovery in 1994 threw the preconceived linear evolution of art into a cocked hat?  There is evidence that many groups visited Chauvet over the millennia prior to the landslide that sealed it 22,000 years ago. Perhaps, Chauvet acted as an inspiration to later painters.
 
Could Chauvet have been a beginning, the creative spark that resulted in a school of painting that lasted more than 20,000 years? And, what does it say about the cultural evolution of European Homo Sapiens? Stylized art is, after all, degenerate art. It takes creativity and turns it into uniformity. It is also an indicator of a maturing, settled culture. 
 
Archaeologically, the Upper Paleolithic of Southwestern France is divided into five broad successive periods; Aurignacian (∼39,500–34,000 BP), Gravettian (∼34,000–26,100 BP), Solutrean (∼26,100–24,600 BP), Magdalenian (∼24,600–15,500 BP) and Azilian (∼15,500–11,500 BP). BP means "Before present" which is figured from the year 1950. The problem is coming up with a basis for these divisions, if divisions they are. All we have is a pile of bones in one hand and a pile of flint in the other. In some cases; we have images, painting, engraving, drawing and sculpture which is often ignored in archeologists  demographic evaluation of cultures in these successive periods.
 
Next: Spectacular Lascaux: CLICK HERE

How would you describe this book and its themes in a couple of sentences?

 

The Dawning: 31,000 BC is a story about the deep past and a meditation on the present. Aside from the romance and adventure, the theme revolves around the development of human political and social culture which I contend is based on human nature, a nature which has not changed since the beginning of human history.

 

In contemporary literature, prehistory is often portrayed as an idyllic period, free of strife, where men and women were equal and there was magic in the air; the domain of Rousseau's noble savage. While an interesting theme, it is total fiction. In The Dawning, I have attempted to portray the people and the period as I believe it really was.

 

What attracted you to writing fiction about prehistory?

 

The magnificent 30,000-36,000-year-old paintings discovered in 1994 at Chauvet Cave in Southern France. The art is dynamic and sophisticated and tells of a culture which could hardly be called primitive.

You paint a vivid picture of daily life in prehistory: hunting, making fire, travelling, the weather, animals such as cave lions and hyenas. What kinds of research did you do for this story?

 

I took an archaeology course at University of Virginia, read about twenty-five books, everything from scholarly tomes to the Boy Scout Manual. There are a number of groups practicing experimental archaeology and there are published journals. I watched videos of fire making, flint knapping and spear throwing to name just a few.

 

Which research books did you pull off your shelf most often?

 

The Bulletin of Primitive Technology (experimental archaeology) was useful. I bought a set. Desdemaine-Hugon's Stepping Stones was another. Don's Maps and The Bradshaw Society were two very useful websites.

 

The shamans play significant roles in your story. How did you imagine your way into these characters and their influence in their communities?

 

The first shamans were tribal wise men. Often, they were the dreamers, the non-conformists, the tinkerers. Small groups of hunter/gatherers produced little surplus. Everyone had to, literally, pull their weight. No one was just wandering around, shaking rattles and mumbling to themselves.

 

I favor the Eastern European term, šamán and used it throughout The Dawning. "Shaman" carries with it a boatload of connotations—men in horned headdresses and painted faces, covered in feathers. These images conjure up something of an anachronism, a stereotype. I doubt that tribal wise men fit that image in these small mobile clans in earliest times. More likely, they earned their keep as part-time healers and storytellers.

 

Later we see shamans morphing into priests and then into priestly castes who claimed to influence the spirits but were essentially parasitic. In the historical development of culture they--along with the warriors--eventually took over and still rule. Osirus, Anubis, Enlil, Ahura Mazda--most of these made up dieties were worshipped far longer than Christianty has been around. Among these hunter/gatherers there was no surplus upon which a priestly class could feed and take root. 

 

Are there elements of your own life experiences that you have woven into your story?

 

Very little. My academic background is in philosophy. My views of human nature—which is pretty dark—definitely influenced my characterizations.

 

There is tension between the two half-brothers, Baal and Ejil. Do you have tricks for getting to know your characters?

 

No tricks. The experts tell us that these people were just like us. We share the same nature. So, analogies about the relationships of modern human siblings were useful.

 

Not so many novelists have chosen to write about the period of prehistory. Jean Auel, William Golding, Raymond Williams spring to mind. Have other prehistory novelists been significant for you?

 

Don't forget Jack London. I haven't read Williams. Auel's first book was brilliant though it's a bit dated given what we've learned through DNA studies and other discoveries over the last twenty years. Golding took on the impossible. How do you write close third person with characters who lack self-consciousness? Neanderthals did have a sense of self.