The Cave Art at Pech Merle was discovered in 1922 by three teenagers. The Panel of Spotted Horses is the most famous painting in the cave and among the best known pieces of Paleolithic art. It depicts two horses covered with black dots which have been created with much effort. Pech Merle in France remains one of the few Prehistoric sites with cave art that is open to the general public and thus this panel may be viewed in its original state.
Table of Contents
S1 – Discovery
Pech Merle is a cave at Cabrerets in the Lot département of the Occitania region in France. Its cave art was first discovered by three teenagers in 1922. They were André David, Henri Dutertre and Marthe David; aged sixteen, fifteen and thirteen respectively. The three had been exploring the cave for two years before they made this important discovery. They were assisted in their exploration by Father Amedee Lemozi, a member of the clergy of Cabrerets and an amateur archaeologist.
S2 – Description
The Panel of Spotted Horses has been painted on a natural wall of rock that is more or less vertical. The rock provided the artists with a mostly flat surface to create the painting. The painting shows two calm and dreamlike horses who are covered in black dots. The dots have been created by blowing pigment at the wall. In 2011, scientists found DNA evidence to suggest that horses with white bodies and black spots actually existed in the ice age. So the artist might be depicting what he actually saw.
The horse on the right looks more convincing as the rock in that part is shaped like a horse’s head. Using the natural shape of the rock is not uncommon in Paleolithic art. This is cited as support by one of the theories explaining cave art, the Shamanism theory. It suggests that cave art was used to access a parallel spirit world through alternative states of consciousness. The animal’s spirit was evident where a bulge suggested its shape and the shaman’s power brought that spirit to the surface.
Michel Lorblanchet, a leading French specialist in the field of Paleolithic art, estimated that the creating the panel must have required several days work. Much time would have been devoted to the visual qualities of the painting including the use of stencils to create clear, crisp lines. The artist has also carefully placed the dots so that they don’t overlap the outlines of the animals.
S3 – Age
There are two levels of at Pech Merle. However, paintings have been created only on the first level of the cave. 300 meters of the walls are painted. The rock art in the cave is dated to the Gravettian period in the Paleolithic Era. This period lasted from around 28,000 to 24,000 years ago. In particular, the Spotted Horses Panel is dated to 24,640 plus or minus 390 years ago.
S4 – Prehistoric Rock Art Purpose
S5 – Paleolithic Art Overview
Main Sources
S1:-
Lawson, Andrew J. (2012). “Painted Caves: Palaeolithic Rock Art in Western Europe.” p373,374.
S2:-
Jones, Jonathan (Nov 8, 2011). “Cave art: what DNA can’t tell us about the spotty horses”. Guardian News.
“Art That Changed the World”. DK. Penguin Random House. p17.
White, Randall. (2003). “Prehistoric art: the symbolic journey of humankind.” p118.
S3:-
Alpert, Barbara Olins. (Dec 13, 2013). “The Meaning of the Dots on the Horses of Pech Merle”. MDPI.