Villars Cave
The Villars Cave, Grotte de Villars French or Grotte du Cluzeau, is a cave in the area of the municipality Villars, in the Dordogne, France. It is next to the cave of Rouffignac the largest cave system in the Dordogne and contains very beautiful calcareous concretions cave paintings and petroglyphs from the Lower Magdalenian.
Geography and Geology
The Villars Cave is located 3.5 kilometers northeast of Villars ( straight line ), approximately 500 meters north- northeast of the hamlet of Le Cluzeau. She can be reached via D 82 from Villars to Saint- Saud- Lacoussière, branching near the hamlet of Le Cluzeau. Its entrance is on the left side of the valley of the Ruisseau de l' Etang Rompu, a left tributary of the Trincou, at about 170 meters above sea level. The cave is a typical karst cave, which has formed in the Jurassic Oolithkalken Oberbajocs. On the other side of the valley, passing through a south- striking fault the Jurakalke; they should very likely related to the cave system in causal connection, which had been extracted by underground rivers during the Quaternary from the rock under the influence of organic incurred carbonic acid.
Discovery
The cave was discovered in late 1953 by members of the Speleo - Club de Périgueux, after they had become aware of a Burrow strong steam outlet. In 1956, the first scratch marks of cave bears were noted. The cave paintings were Pierre Vidal, a member of the club cavers, but only years later in December 1957. The works of art were then examined by the Abbé Henri Breuil and inspected. In 1959, the cave was opened to visitors.
Scientific work in 1958 in the Villars Cave next to Breuil and François Bordes Abbé Glory, followed by André Leroi Gourhan in 1959 and of Brigite and Gilles Delluc in 1970.
Description of the cave
The opened for the visit of the cave is about 600 meters long and consists of three interconnected by corridors halls. But the cave system consists beyond continued and has several levels distributed a total passage length of over 13 kilometers. This makes it next to the Rouffignac Cave the largest known cave system in the Dordogne.
The entrance of the cave offers a host of karst features such as stalactites and stalagmites, columns, buckets of different shape, wall coatings, macaroni (they are unlike stalactites hollow inside ) and so-called Stoup (French gours ).
A steep, not suitable for wheelchairs stone staircase leads down to the present entrance, which is located approximately 10 meters north-west and slightly below the original access. About a south-southeast - trending, approximately 40 meters long access corridor ( galerie d' accés ) it goes to the crossroads ( carrefour ), in which the cave system branches into three branches. The right branch is oriented to south-east, about 130 meters long, combined speed theater system. It consists of the holy water pool hall ( salle des Bénitiers ), the passage ( le passage ) and the Grand Balcony ( grand balcon ) with the Great stalagmites at the end. The holy water pool hall continues to the northwest in the mess hall ( salle du chaos ) continues. The left branch has two halls, which are oriented to the East and North, the latter being larger bulges to southeast: the 10 -meter candles hall ( salle des cierges ) and the 30-meter long painting room ( salle des peintures ), located at the rear end the output is. Before the candles hall branches off to the south-east is a third, 50 -meter-long vein system from which pivots behind the scratch trace hall ( salle des griffades ) in the south-southeast direction and meets again on the right side branch before the Great balcony.
Access corridor
The access corridor can be found on the right side of the wall numerous scratch marks of cave bears. Here and there can be painted dots and line trains observe that may occur sporadically or in groups.
Holy Water Beck Hall
The 10 meter high holy water pool hall connects via a sloping ramp directly to the intersection. In addition to very beautiful stalactites and stalagmites, it is characterized by two large Kalksinterbecken similar to stoup; hence the name.
Chaos hall
In 30 meters long and 15 meters wide chaos hall it had come to a ceiling collapse, powerful Kalkbrocken and blocks are now messed up indiscriminately. In very massive calcareous concretions have formed. The resulting chaos can be very nice look from the western end of the higher holy water from the hall.
Candles hall
The candle room contains dots and dashes some very nice figural representations such as a 40 -centimeter bison, a horse's head and a cow. The candles hall ends with a narrow passage leading to the painting room. This passage has been enhanced for easier access. These, unfortunately, had to be destroyed some very nice concretions.
Painting hall
In the painting room and most beautiful cave paintings are on display, including the horses fresco ( la fresque de chevaux ), the Blue Horse ( le petit cheval bleu ) as well as humans and bison ( l' homme et le bison). It contains, moreover, very many, partly Intergrowths calcareous concretions.
Finds
There, up to 50 centimeters in size murals were a total of about 30, discovered that have been carried out with black, mixed in animal fat manganese oxide. However, most of these representations have due to a milky Kalzitüberzugs a blue tint, such as the now famous Blue Horse Villars ( this Kalzitüberzug has protected the paintings, the Villars Cave has so unlike Lascaux no problems with fungus, etc.). Some carvings are present, further schematized painted female figures, painted with ocher red dots and usually difficult to interpret geometric symbols such as bars, crosses and barbed resisted symbols. In addition to horses, cattle -like, bison, ibex and a deer head one of a bison attacked human form was similar as shown in the fountain scene at Lascaux.
The Cro -Magnons have left some traces, several concretions example, were overturned and destroyed, tools were sometimes lie ( including Silexabschläge, bones - mainly by reindeer - color remains of ocher and manganese oxide and related Farbnäpfchen from bowl-shaped carbonate concretions ).
Dating
The artworks can Leroi - Gourhan be assigned according to style the second period of the style III, and consequently derived from the older Magdalenian. You are likely to be about 17,000 years old.
An absolute age dating of a found in a fire pit below the scene man and bison tooth was burnt according to Michel Genty 18 000 years BP.
The stylistic match the scene man and bison with similar representations in Lascaux and Roc de Sers indicates the period 18 000 to 17 000 years BP down.
The cave itself is of course much older than their former visitors. Dominique Genty dated on the basis of uranium -thorium method has a 1.50 meter long stalagmite from the lower level of the cave to the period 83 100 to 31 800 years BP and 81 100 to 29 800 BC. The minimum age of Stalagmitenwachstums in the cave therefore falls within the beginning of the Vistula glaciation. The stalagmite has seven discontinuities D1 to D7, which represent three growth arrest. In particular, the growth arrest of 65 400 to 59 000 BC is very striking and indicates a very cold and dry period. It correlates with the Heinrich event H6. The other two discontinuities prove very humid conditions in which stood the cave under water. The measured δ13C - curve is very detailed and confirmed the results of the ice cores from Greenland. Moreover, you can use its very high accuracy in determining the age of the Dansgaard - Oeschger events DO6 achieve to DO20. The event DO12 by 44 000 to 43 000 BC is very pronounced, with the former growth rates similar to those already present. The δ18O values are comparable with the results from the Soreq Cave in Israel and other records from the marine area.