French archaeologists talked about a startling discovery that they had to hide for several years. Scientists explain their silence simply: the excavation site had to be protected from black diggers and the loitering public. Only now have archaeologists published the first results of research and revealed some details, including the place of the find.
The story began with a hurricane that swept over the French region of Brittany in 1987. The wind uprooted a pine tree at the top of the Empress Rock, a 50-meter cliff on the outskirts of the Breton town of Plowastel-Daoulas on the Atlantic coast of France. When examining the damage, in a hole left over from a dead tree, experts found interesting archaeological material.
The Empress's Rock in the town of Plugastel. Photo: Nicolas Bzh / flickr.com
Excavations began, stretching for years - the cliff rises on the bank overgrown with trees, so the use of modern technology turned out to be impossible, everything had to be done the old fashioned way, by hand. 26 years later, in the summer of 2013, the researchers reached the foot of the Empress's Rock, where they discovered a small cave - something like a grotto, shelter under the rock. From there, archaeologists under the leadership of Nicolas Naudinot extracted many artifacts of the Paleolithic era - flint arrowheads, stone knives, scrapers … Since 2013, there have already been 4659 such items. All of them are of interest to science, but only 45 of them became an absolute sensation.
We are talking about artifacts that archaeologists have called "prehistoric engravings": these are 45 slate tablets with images of animals - horses and bison. The age of "engravings", scratched into soft stone, painted or tinted with coal, is more than 14,000 years.
Unlike the large-scale "canvases" of prehistoric artists on the walls of caves such as Lascaux (France), Altamira (Spain) or Shulgan-Tash (Russia), the slate engravings from Plugastel are very small: 29 of them are less than five centimeters in length, 14 are less 10 cm in length, and only two rather large, almost 30 cm, with perfectly preserved images on both sides of the stone - these are mirror "portraits" of horses and bison.
Shale engraving no. 741 depicting a horse, side A. Photo: N. Naudinot, sketch from stone - C. Bourdier
“We were completely struck by the beauty of these drawings and the amazing skill of the artist. The details are drawn very skillfully - in the images of horses, for example, the hooves, the mane, the foal standing next to it are easily distinguishable … The drawings are very lively and speaking,”Nicolas Nodino told the French edition of Le Figaro.
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Archaeologists recall how, after the discovery of the first engravings in 2013, they had to put aside their shovels so as not to accidentally damage the fragile slate, and switch to the most delicate tools - scrapers, garden shovels, brushes … And the researchers also obtained from the regional authorities the complete protection of the Empress Rock from outsiders …
All these measures slowed down the excavation process, but the discovery was worth it. The Plougastel engravings are the oldest works of art found in Brittany, but they are not local discoveries. Such images, especially given their age, are extremely rare in Europe. One of them - the head of a bison surrounded by rays - is absolutely unique: such symbolism has never been encountered by scientists before. However, when speaking of age, archaeologists mean not only the antiquity of the slate engravings: the same drawings from the already mentioned famous caves are a couple of millennia older than the engravings from Plowastel. The point is in the period to which scientists refer them.
“For French and European archeology, these engravings are of great value, as they relate to a transitional period previously unknown to researchers. It is a transition from the figurative art of Madeleine culture to the much more schematic and geometric art of the Azilian culture,”explains Nodino.
Perhaps, a few more obscure words should be added to the scientist's explanation in order to more clearly explain the historical value of the find. One such word is Allerød, or Allerød Warming, a climatic period according to the Blitt-Sernander classification. About 14,500 years ago, the climate of Europe became warm and humid, and after Allerød, the continent became colder again. Even in our time, we feel the consequences of global warming, but in prehistoric times, along with the change in climate, everything changed, including the social organization of people and such a subtle matter as art.
Until now, it was believed that the Allerode Warming ended the Madeleine culture with its exquisite and highly realistic graphic style. The very name of the era, Madeleine, dates back to the La Madelaine cave in the south of France, where beautiful prehistoric drawings and images of people and animals were found in the stone in the 19th century.
In their scientific work, published in the American edition of PLOS, French archaeologists cite several examples of "engravings" from the Madeleine era, in addition to the well-known drawings from the caves of Lascaux and Altamira.
Madeleine engravings found in caves in France: 1) Le Morin Grotto, 2) Villepin Grotto, 3-4) La Madeleine Grotto, 5) Limeuil Grotto. Image source: Published on plos.org
Obviously, such an artistic level, the degree of detail in the images and their realism presuppose not only talent, but also the presence of very advanced skills in stone processing and possession of tools. According to scientists, this may indicate that the engravings and drawings were carried out by "professionals" who received their skills not by a fluke, but, probably, underwent special training.
Allerod warming and harsh changes in the way of life of ancient Europeans also found their reflection in art. The Madeleine culture was replaced by the so-called Azilian culture, which originated in Europe about 14,000 years ago. According to French scientists, “one of the elements of rapid social restructuring was the rejection of naturalistic and figurative images on objects and walls of caves in favor of abstract ornaments on small stones”.
In the Azilian era, images of people and animals disappear, they are replaced by "small forms" and geometric abstract designs. This moment is considered a key one in the chronology of the Paleolithic, and it affects not only the visual arts. Researchers associate the change in style with the loss of the necessary skills, the simplification of the tools, "the dissolution of the high Madeleine standards of working with stone." This is especially noticeable in the art of the late Azilian culture - we are not talking about artistic preferences, they say, realism was better than abstraction, but about the technologies of working with stone and bone: a factor that can be evaluated objectively. In general, this speaks of serious changes in the lives of people of the Azilian era and of the difficulties they had to face in order to survive in the new climate and new landscapes.
In this context, the words of the archaeologist Nicolas Nodino about "a transitional period, previously unknown to researchers" take on meaning: the dating of the engravings from Plowastel refers them to the Azilian culture (14,000-14,500 years ago, Allerød has already arrived), while the style of images - to the Madeleine one.
Scientists offered their own explanation for the obtained data: the "Madeleine" skills of working with stone, which required preliminary preparation, degraded faster than the realistic stylistics of images widespread in the Madeleine era. Allerd's warming "killed" the professionals from art and the symbolism they developed, but this did not happen immediately.
However, until now, nothing has indicated that the transition was long and gradual - perhaps, scientists admit, this is due to the insufficient number of finds of the required period. The slate engravings from the grotto under the Empress's Rock are actually the first evidence of the existence of a transitional stage: the "agony" of art and technology of the Madeleine culture lasted longer than it was generally believed.
For the avoidance of doubt, scientists have determined and confirmed the dating of the objects found in the Plugastel in different ways. The soil in this region of France is highly acidic, so organic materials are extremely poorly preserved. Archaeologists are accustomed to dealing mainly with stone artifacts and have the necessary skills and equipment to study them. In this case, scientists analyzed the way the stone tools found next to the engravings were processed. Several characteristic features indicate that they were made during the early Azilian era.
This conclusion is supported by radiocarbon dating: three samples indicated the climatic periods Bölling and Allerød / Bölling - both date from the era of global warming, which began in 12000-12500 BC.
The slate engravings, however, bear all the hallmarks of the "Madeleine school". The theme of horses and bison is very characteristic of the Paleolithic. The lone horse from engraving 741 (side A, photo is shown above in the text) betrays the artist's love for details and the ability to convey them: for example, the texture of the fur and even the volumes of the animal are recreated using fine shading throughout the body, while the mane is depicted with strokes of a different length. Even more interesting is the reverse side of engraving no. 741: it depicts two adults in a mirror image and, probably, a foal hiding under the mother's belly.
Slate engraving no. 741 depicting three horses, side B. Photo: N. Naudinot, sketch from stone by C. Bourdier
All images are solid, well traced, all proportions are observed, as well as perspective - this is especially noticeable on paired details, such as legs and ears. This suggests that the artist tried to reflect reality as much as possible from the point of view of the observer.
The details have been worked out so carefully that scientists could not help but pay attention to such an oddity as the lack of eyes in horses. The researchers have not yet found a suitable explanation - in other engravings of the Madeleine culture, the eyes of horses are all right.
Recall that at that time wild horses were the object of hunting, before domestication was still very far away. However, the images demonstrate not only food interest in these animals - horses, like bison, have been objects of worship and admiration.
In this regard, a double-sided engraving depicting a bison's head surrounded by rays became a separate sensation.
“The engraving with the“shining bison”is unique. Such a combination - a realistic figure of an animal and a schematic representation of a radiance, a halo - is encountered for the first time in the prehistoric art of Europe. We can only assume that this image had a deep symbolic meaning,”says Nicolas Nodino.
According to the researchers, the rays carefully cut into the stone, complementing the head of the bison with powerful horns, indicate the special, even sacred value of bison for the ancient inhabitants of Brittany. Analysis by non-invasive Raman spectroscopy revealed further evidence in favor of this theory. "Shining Bull" is not a simple engraving: the ancient master, for the sake of enhancing the visual effect, tinted the contours scratched in the stone with black pigment. The chemical trace of this pigment was discovered by the spectrometer.
Engraving No. 317 from Plowastel: side A - a bison's head surrounded by rays, side B - a “normal” bison head. Photo: N. Naudinot, sketch from stone - C. Bourdier
The people who left thousands of stone artifacts and amazing engravings under the Empress's Rock were hunters. Most (42%) of the processed stones found in the grotto are retouched, while archaeologists found only one core (a semi-finished stone for further splitting and the production of stone tools). Scientists concluded that people came to the shelter under the rock with their "blanks", created small batches of the necessary weapons on the spot, and then left, taking valuable cores with them. Everything indicates that the shelter was not intended for living, they visited here for a short time for special purposes. Most likely, a hunter's camp was located here.
“We believe that the grotto served as a temporary shelter for small groups of hunters, from 2 to 10 people. At that time the sea was not in the immediate vicinity of the Empress Rock, but 50 kilometers from it,”says Nicolas Nodino.
It took a hurricane and 30 years of exploration for a lonely cliff on the coast of Brittany to begin telling about its prehistoric past. Excavations at the Empress's Rock (by the way, named after the wife of Napoleon III, if anyone is interested) is far from complete - they will resume this summer. But, even if nothing else is found here, European archeology has already received rich material for thought and admiration.
Maria Myasnikova