the lascaux project
EDITED BY PEGI EYERS
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My motherline and mitrochrondial DNA (mtDNA) have been traced to the Lascaux Caves region of France - in essence, the site of my ancient European Indigenous homeland. I am compiling a new anthology of art, poetry and prose expressing the magic and mystery of the Lascaux caves! - Pegi Eyers Please submit your contributions to [email protected] by June 21, 2028 potential themesSacred Site / Deep Time Origin Stories / Full Circle / Reuniting with European Homelands / Homecoming / Reverse Migration / Voices of Earth / Archaic Whispers / Matriarchal Clan Mothers / Animist Art / Cave as Womb Space
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cave art
John Steffler
Early March sun hot on the coffee table and my stocking feet, I'm
looking at photos of iron oxide and charcoal paintings someone made
in near darkness on the walls of Chauvet Cave near the Rhone River
32,000 years ago. Minus ten degrees Celsius outside, but the light
swells on the snowy yard before flooding the window. Jean Clottes'
book, Cave Art, open on my lap. It's strangely easy to think in
thousands of years. For 25,000 years we told the same stories,
engaged with the same gods, the great animal rivers, the obdurate alien
fellows, stacked-up dense and barging, rhinos, lions, bears, bison,
aurochs, mammoths, in the tundra's slopes and valleys, never far from
ice. For 25,000 years. Used the same kitchen utensils, answered our
children's questions with the same words. The herds of thick-bellied
horses, the reindeer, red deer, ibex flowing north and south, upland
and downland, always pursued by the poor sun. We watched and
adored them, filling ourselves like ticks with a drop of their vast
life. We were sticks, we were zigzags, we were eyes only, drinking in,
swallowing images to build outselves, lines and words to hold the
animals inside our limbs. No stars or sun. The reindeer were the sun.
No plants or rivers. The horses were the plants and rivers. No human
faces. Only animals. We were invisible. Bottomless. Witnesses.
And when the ice began to melt and forests crowded the tundra plains,
some of us followed what was left of the deer and the ice north-east
into America, into Perth where I sit with photos of Chauvet Cave, and
some of us stayed in the warming forests and raised sheep, pigs and
wheat, made carts and explosions and portraits of ourselves as the sun,
and soon sailed west here to Perth where where we didn't recognize our
cousins from only a few thousand years ago, had forgotten all our
shared stories, our old gods, except in sorrowful turbulent dreams.
****
John Steffler, CV2: The Canadian Journal of Poetry & Critical Writing "In Nature's Fold: Animism in Poetry"
looking at photos of iron oxide and charcoal paintings someone made
in near darkness on the walls of Chauvet Cave near the Rhone River
32,000 years ago. Minus ten degrees Celsius outside, but the light
swells on the snowy yard before flooding the window. Jean Clottes'
book, Cave Art, open on my lap. It's strangely easy to think in
thousands of years. For 25,000 years we told the same stories,
engaged with the same gods, the great animal rivers, the obdurate alien
fellows, stacked-up dense and barging, rhinos, lions, bears, bison,
aurochs, mammoths, in the tundra's slopes and valleys, never far from
ice. For 25,000 years. Used the same kitchen utensils, answered our
children's questions with the same words. The herds of thick-bellied
horses, the reindeer, red deer, ibex flowing north and south, upland
and downland, always pursued by the poor sun. We watched and
adored them, filling ourselves like ticks with a drop of their vast
life. We were sticks, we were zigzags, we were eyes only, drinking in,
swallowing images to build outselves, lines and words to hold the
animals inside our limbs. No stars or sun. The reindeer were the sun.
No plants or rivers. The horses were the plants and rivers. No human
faces. Only animals. We were invisible. Bottomless. Witnesses.
And when the ice began to melt and forests crowded the tundra plains,
some of us followed what was left of the deer and the ice north-east
into America, into Perth where I sit with photos of Chauvet Cave, and
some of us stayed in the warming forests and raised sheep, pigs and
wheat, made carts and explosions and portraits of ourselves as the sun,
and soon sailed west here to Perth where where we didn't recognize our
cousins from only a few thousand years ago, had forgotten all our
shared stories, our old gods, except in sorrowful turbulent dreams.
****
John Steffler, CV2: The Canadian Journal of Poetry & Critical Writing "In Nature's Fold: Animism in Poetry"
Caves, Sounds, and the Human Imagination
an excerpt from The Sound Atlas: A Guide to Strange Sounds Across Landscapes and Imagination
To earth, down into the depths below. Even after thirty thousand years we can still feel the vital essence of ancient worlds emanating from Paleolithic art, but what were the sounds and rituals that accompanied the artists when they decided to etch their stories into stone? In the chapter entitled "Caves, Sounds, and the Human Imagination," The Sound Atlas explores the field of archeoacoustics, the discipline that studies relationships between humans and sounds across history.
An excerpt:
"In the right cave. At the right spot. Clapping becomes hoof beats. Echoes blur together and reverberate to conjure a herd of prey, stampeding. Torchlight and shadows flicker across the outlines of wild horses, elk, mammoths. Hunter and hunted commence to dance a dance of what is to come, or in honour of what has always been, time and again.
Cross-modality information transfer: a term proposed by linguist Shigeru Miyagawa to describe the flow of knowledge between the auditory and the visual centres within the growing brains of early modern humans. From the interplay of creation and enactment, a transmutation occurs. The abstract arises. Perhaps within the cave was where our species’ symbolic minds began to take shape. Perhaps nestled within the blind wombs of the world, the first sparks of human imagination alight...."
The Sound Atlas: A Guide to Strange Sounds Across Landscapes and Imagination by Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen
@michaela_vieser @utter_earth >amazon<
#soundatlas #soundscapes #archeoacoustics #paleolithic #songofthecaves #artsoundscape #deeptimelistening
Photo credit: Replica of the painting from the Chauvet cave in the Anthropos museum. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
An excerpt:
"In the right cave. At the right spot. Clapping becomes hoof beats. Echoes blur together and reverberate to conjure a herd of prey, stampeding. Torchlight and shadows flicker across the outlines of wild horses, elk, mammoths. Hunter and hunted commence to dance a dance of what is to come, or in honour of what has always been, time and again.
Cross-modality information transfer: a term proposed by linguist Shigeru Miyagawa to describe the flow of knowledge between the auditory and the visual centres within the growing brains of early modern humans. From the interplay of creation and enactment, a transmutation occurs. The abstract arises. Perhaps within the cave was where our species’ symbolic minds began to take shape. Perhaps nestled within the blind wombs of the world, the first sparks of human imagination alight...."
The Sound Atlas: A Guide to Strange Sounds Across Landscapes and Imagination by Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen
@michaela_vieser @utter_earth >amazon<
#soundatlas #soundscapes #archeoacoustics #paleolithic #songofthecaves #artsoundscape #deeptimelistening
Photo credit: Replica of the painting from the Chauvet cave in the Anthropos museum. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.