LEARNING CENTER
Before visiting the cave, we suggest a fun way of learning a little bit about the cave formation and prehistoric art by watching the video film.
The formation of the Villars Cave
Situated on the west facing slope of the Cluzeau massif, Villars cave is a natural cavity It was formed from limestone rock which makes it a " karstic " cave.
Its formation goes back to 150 million years, to the secondary era, or more precisely to the " Jurassic ".During that period, water covered the entire area which was later to be called ...France.
Very slowly, at the bottom of the ocean, a layer of limestone builds up from lake deposits of sea sediments. Over tens of millions of years, cretacious limestone was deposited in this very region.
Then the earth's crust began to fold and to crinkle due to the movement of continental plates. The Pyrenees and the Alps were thus formed and these new lands gradually pushed the waters back. Once the sea had retreated for good, the sedimentary layers appeared.
The tertiary era brought with it a series of climates provoking great erosions. It was only during the quaternary era that the landscape took on its present day's form and that the valleys were hewed out, leaving the tertiary alluviums on the top of the hills. We still have the limestone massifs, or the Lot and Périgord limestone plateaus from this ancient period.
As soon as the limestone rock emerged, it was submitted to the action of climatic phenomena and especially to rain.
There was both mechanical and chemical erosion for when rain falling on the ground comes into contact with organic humus, it absorbs carbonic gas and becomes slightly acid.
This acid water then slowly dissolves the soluble limestone and galleries, caves and chasms are hewed out naturally.
The formation of Concretions
The water which is saturated in calcium bicarbonate reaches the cave through
the cracks in the rocks and deposits its calcium bicarbonate according to two
processes.
1) By degassing the carbonic gas and by the precipitation of calcium bicarbonate,
which dries and crystallizes in the form of calcite.
2) By evaporation and deposit the water evaporates and the calcite crystallizes
naturally forming a concretion little by little.
This deposit leads to the formation of extremely varied concretions: stalactites,
stalagmites, columns, draperies, eccentrics, fonts...
The frequent dripping phenomenon is behind the formation of stalactites on
the ceiling and the vertically growing stalagmites on the floor in caves and
galleries.
When a stalactite joins up with a stalagmite growing below it, a column
is born.
Eccentrics are quite a particular type of the stalactite family. Their formation is due to the crystallization in a veil around the drop of water. Continual dripping from ceilings and walls generates great flows of calcite which are often thick and can coat an entire wall. The drapery is a wavy for, which clings to the ceiling, similar to a stalactite, but the drapery grows towards the wall and does not become very thick.
The prehistoric painted cave
Roughly 17,000 years ago, during the the Lascaux period, Cro-Magnon man lived in the Trincou valley and on the Cluzeau massif. They were nomadic hunter-gatherers. The cave entrance at Villars was very different all that time ago. There was no doubt a rock shelter protecting this entrance. The people who painted the bestiary at Villars cave came there perhaps after a long hunting expedition.
Today, prehistoric art specialists know which techniques our ancestors used to paint their masterpieces. The Magdalenian artists used the flattest, driest walls to paint on. Manganese bi-oxide, which produced a black colour, was widely used.
Several methods were used to apply the paint: either using a finger, a brush made from animal hair or fur, or by blowing dry powder on to the wall.
So Villars cave is a memory; a memory of our ancestors who are of great interest to archaeologists and prehistorians, but also a memory of our fascinating nature for the scientists of other disciplines.
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