Back to Don's Maps
Pech Merle
Pech Merle is one of the few prehistoric cave painting sites in France which remain open to the general public. Extending for more than a mile from the entrance are caverns the walls of which are painted with dramatic murals dating from the Gravettian culture (some 25 000 years BP) Some of the paintings and engravings, however, could date from the later Magdalenian era (16 000 years BP). This area once had a great river flowing through it, cutting underground channels which were later used by humans for shelter and eventually for mural painting. The walls of seven of the chambers at Pech Merle have fresh, lifelike images of a woolly mammoth, spotted horses, bovids, reindeer, handprints, and some human figures. Footprints of children, preserved in what was once clay, have been found more than a kilometre underground. Within a ten kilometre radius of the site are ten other caves with prehistoric art of the Upper Palaeolithic period, but none of these are open to the public. During the Ice Age the caves were very probably used as places of refuge by prehistoric peoples when the area had an Arctic climate, very cold temperatures, and native animal species very different from those of the present day. It is supposed that, at some point in the past, mudslides covered the cave entrances providing an airtight seal until the 20th century. The cave at Pech Merle has been open to the public since 1926. Visiting groups are limited in size and number so as not to destroy the delicate artwork with the excessive humidity, heat and carbon dioxide produced by breathing.Text above from Wikipedia.
Photo: From http://www.quercy.net/pechmerle/english/introduction.html
Cabrerets and the Pech Merle site. Note the white limestone evident throughout the area.
Pech Merle is a cave in the south of France in the Department called Lot. (Quercy is the pre-Napoleonic name of the province, still in popular use.) It is at an elevation of 280m on the eastern side of the hill called Pech Merle.
Pech Merle was discovered in 1922 by two teenagers, André David and Henri Dutertre, when they were 16 and 15 years old respectively. The examination of the paintings and engravings was immediately begun by Father Amédée Lemozi, the priest of Cabrerets. The galleries of the cave are on average 10 m wide and the height of the ceilings is about 5 to 10 m. There are two levels of the cave, but there are only paintings on the first level. 300 m of the walls are painted.
(the text following is from the excellent site http://www.quercy.net/pechmerle/english/introduction.html)
Why is it called "Pech Merle"? In the lower third of France is a southern Latin culture called langue d'oc or occitan. Pech is the french writing of the occitan word puèg which means a hill. We pronounce it as in "fresh". It appears in the name of many localities, written pech, puech, pioch, pey, and you can read it on the signs of the regional roads. In old french, the word is puy, as in "Puy de Dome". Merle is sometimes translated as blackbird, so we can think of the name as Blackbird Hill.
Pech Merle is near the small village of Cabrerets.
Photo: From http://vm.kemsu.ru/en/palaeolith/pesh-merl.html
Photo of the surface of the site with superimposed plan of the cave.
Painted horses, Peche-Merle
Photo: http://www.slideshare.net/extremecraft/01-paleolithic
Painting of horses and hands from the Pech Merle cave. Gravettien. Replica in the Brno museum Anthropos.
Photo: HTO
Permission: 22 May 2009 - Public domain
In 1995 Michel Lorblanchet studied some samples of black colour from the "dotted horses" painting of the Pech Merle cave in the paper Lorblanchet (1996)
They found a mixture made mostly with manganese and barium oxides. Some very scarce samples contained a little bit of charcoal. Amongst about 20 samples, only one (in the area indicated by the red dot) contained enough charcoal to be able to be dated to about 25 000 BP (radiocarbon dating by Mme Hélène Valladas, CNRS laboratory in Gif sur Yvette, Essone, close to Paris).
Photo: http://www.slideshare.net/extremecraft/01-paleolithic
"Placard Sign" and speared man in the cave of Pech Merle.
Photo: Bahn and Vertut (1997)
Placard Sign from Pech Merle redrawn. Note the bird like shape of this sign. These signs occur in eleven painted forms at Cougnac, three times at Pech Merle, and as seven engraved forms at Grotte du Placard. They are possibly Solutrean - Bahn and Vertut (1997)
Photo: Redrawn by Don Hitchcock after Bahn and Vertut (1997)
Type Placard sign and a man wounded by several spears, in red ochre. Height 75 cm, from Grotte du Pech-Merle, Lot. Probably from the Solutrean.
Photo: Michel Lorblanchet, via http://ma.prehistoire.free.fr/signe_au_pm.htm
Type Placard sign and a man wounded by several spears, in red ochre. Height 75 cm, from Grotte du Pech-Merle, Lot. Probably from the Solutrean, showing the outline of the "le Placard" sign and the man wounded with spears.
Photo: Redrawn by Don Hitchcock after Michel Lorblanchet, via http://ma.prehistoire.free.fr/signe_au_pm.htm
La grotte du Placard is a decorated cave in the commune of Vilhonneur in Charante, 30 km east of Angoulême. It has been extensively researched and has levels dating from the Middle and Upper Paleolithic, especially the Magdalenian and Solutrean. A dozen aviform signs identical to those discovered in the caves of Pech Merle and Cougnac. Similar signs were found in the Cosquer Cave near Marseille, 500 km away. The figures date back about 20 000 years to the Solutrean. The signs are known as Placard type signs. The cave is not accessible to the public.
Mammoth Pech-Merle
Photo from: Agenda de la Préhistoire 2002 - 2003, a superb diary with excellent illustrations sent to me by Anya. My thanks as always.
Pech-Merle (Lot), détail de la frise noire. Mammouth.
Painting of a mammoth in black. An attempt has been made to indicate the beast's characteristic long heavy coat, and the domed head is clearly shown. The original is about 31.5 inches long.
Photo: Man before history by John Waechter
A hand stencil on the wall at Pech Merle
Photo: Man before history by John Waechter
Another version of the hand stencil above on the wall at Pech Merle
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.
Other caves close by, but not open to the public include:
Le Cuzoul des Brasconies, La grotte Carriot, La grotte Christian, La grotte des Faux-Monnayeurs, La grotte du Cantal, Le Cuzoul de Mélaniev, La grotte Marcenac, La grotte de Sainte Eulalie, La grotte du Papetier, La grotte du Moulin, La grotte de la Bigourdane, La grotte de Pergouset.
See: http://www.quercy.net/pechmerle/lot_cele_fr.html
The Grottes de Cougnac caves are near Gourdon, Lot, about 40 km from Pech Merle. The site consists of two caves separated by 200 metres. The first contains many concretions, some very fine, called soda straws. The second is a decorated cave from the Paleolithic. The cave has many prehistoric paintings gadted to the upper Paleolithic. Depictions include deer, megaceros, the ibex, and mammoths as well as various schematic human figures. The paintings corresponded to at least two clearly distinct phases: one around 25 000 BP, the other about 14 000 years before the present.References
- Lorblanchet M., 1996: Quercy, pigments des grottes ornées, Bilan scientifique 1995 (SRA DRAC Midi-Pyrénées), p.152-155.