The Marsoulas Cave in Southwestern France, near Marsoulas in the

Haute-Garonne Haute-Garonne (; oc, Nauta Garona, ; en, Upper Garonne) is a department in the Occitanie region of Southwestern France. Named after the river Garonne, which flows through the department. Its prefecture and main city is Toulouse, the country's ...

, is a small cave notable for its archaeological wealth, including

Paleolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...

cave painting In archaeology, Cave paintings are a type of parietal art (which category also includes petroglyphs, or engravings), found on the wall or ceilings of caves. The term usually implies prehistoric origin, and the oldest known are more than 40,000 ye ...

s and ornaments from the

Magdalenian The Magdalenian cultures (also Madelenian; French: ''Magdalénien'') are later cultures of the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic in western Europe. They date from around 17,000 to 12,000 years ago. It is named after the type site of La Madele ...

. It consists of a straight gallery about long with

parietal art In archaeology, rock art is human-made markings placed on natural surfaces, typically vertical stone surfaces. A high proportion of surviving historic and prehistoric rock art is found in caves or partly enclosed rock shelters; this type also m ...

along the entire length of the cave. The art includes human and animal (bison and horses) figures as well as geometric forms and has been described as being of "profound stylistic originality with few equivalents in the region from the same period". The prehistoric artists who produced these used the varied topography of the cave and ceiling to produce three-dimensional engravings and paintings in scales ranging between to tiny miniatures. Excavations have been carried out since at least 1883 by a number of researchers including

Henri Breuil Henri Édouard Prosper Breuil (28 February 1877 – 14 August 1961), often referred to as Abbé Breuil, was a French Catholic priest, archaeologist, anthropologist, ethnologist and geologist. He is noted for his studies of cave art in the Somme a ...

and

André Leroi-Gourhan André Leroi-Gourhan (; ; 25 August 1911 – 19 February 1986) was a French archaeology, archaeologist, paleontology, paleontologist, paleoanthropology, paleoanthropologist, and anthropology, anthropologist with an interest in technology and a ...

and between these and the visitors attracted by the many publications describing the cave (the first was published in 1885), virtually all the easily accessible surfaces were damaged. Public entrance to the cave was closed in 1996 due to vandalism and graffiti. Engravings and paintings found in the cave have been dated to around 17,000 BP and an extensive program of photographing the decorated panels has been undertaken. These have been digitised and the cave interior laser scanned and 3D images produced with the intention of producing "different recreations of the cave and eventually offer a series of 3D environments for other researchers and the public at large to explore." These will include models of the cave today, as it might have looked when the rock art was new, a virtual version aimed at making the rock art more visible than it is today, and another which will attempt to model what the prehistoric shape of the cave would have been. A

conch Conch () is a common name of a number of different medium-to-large-sized sea snails. Conch shells typically have a high spire and a noticeable siphonal canal (in other words, the shell comes to a noticeable point at both ends). In North Am ...

from 18000 years BP found in the cave in 1931 was demonstrated in 2021 as having been adapted by Magdalenian people as a musical instrument. The patterns painted on the inner-surface of the shell's opening are done in same style as those on the walls of the cave.

References

External links

Don Hitchcock (Don's Maps): "Marsoulas - La Grotte de Marsoulas, ice age art"
{{Authority control Caves of Occitania (administrative region) Archaeological sites in France