AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Caves in dordogne map4/15/2024 ![]() Then I walked over to the museum, but more about this later. Although the main thing here is just Abri (shelter) created by the overhanging rocks of a cliff (See Aspasia's photo below), it's got to be very important as it is where Cro-Magnon Man, human ancestor, was first identified. Indeed, the prehistoric bones were discovered when they dug the area to clear for the train station in 1868. It is a very easy visit, as it is located right by the train station. ![]() My initial motivation to go back was to visit the National Museum of Prehistory, as it was closed on the day I visited Font-de-Gaume in 2009.īut then, by staying overnight in Les Eyzies, I managed to visit three more components of this august WHS: Abri de Cro-Magnon, Les Combarelles, and La Madeleine.Īrriving in Les Eyzies by train in the early afternoon, I first visited Abri de Cro-Magnon, which supposedly opened to the public only in 2014. The first time was for Lascoux in 2004 and the second time was for Font-de-Gaume in 2009. They also warned against a repeat at Altamira of the kind of damage by black mold to the paintings at Lascaux, which was caused by their mismanagement.I was back in the Bordeaux area to visit the Cordouan Lighthouse and decided to swing by the Vezere Valley for the third time. The researchers at Altamira Cave concluded that while reopening the cave to tourists might help the local economy in the short term, the importance of the paintings and their preservation should take precedence. The 14,000 years old Paleolithic rock art examples at Altamira and those in the Lascaux caves in Dordogne, France, are among the best preserved in Europe. The study also identified other items tourists would bring with them, and which would also encourage bacterial and fungal growth, including dust, flakes of skin, and clothing fibers. They found that the presence of large numbers of people would introduce light, increase the temperature and humidity, raise CO2 levels, increase air turbulence, and in short, create perfect conditions for the bacteria and fungi to multiply and resume their destruction of the paintings. ![]() In the new study, published in the journal Science, Saiz-Jimenez and colleagues modeled the effects of allowing the public back into the cave. The 2010 proposal to reopen the cave was dependent on expert opinion of how many visitors should be allowed in the cave. It was closed in 1977 over concerns for the paintings, but reopened in 1982 but annual tourist numbers were restricted to 8,500. When the cave was open large numbers of tourists visited (reaching as many as 174,000 in the 1970s). In 2010 government authorities proposed the cave be reopened to the public to attract tourists and provide a much-needed boost to the local economy. Among the best known of the paintings are those discovered in 1879 of bison, deer and horses, in the Polychromes Hall near the entrance to the cave.Īltamira Cave was closed to tourists in 2002, after Claudia Schabereiter-Gurtner, Saiz-Jimenez, and colleagues first reported that bacteria and fungi were colonizing the paintings and consuming the pigments, which meant they would adversely affect the conservation of the paintings. Professor Cesareo Saiz-Jimenez of the Institute for Natural Resources and Agrobiology, at the Spanish National Research Council (IRNAS-CSIC), and colleagues have warned that reopening the cave could lead to permanent damage to the paintings.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |