Talk:Lascaux

Star Map
This isn't mentioned? I don't know enough about it to write myself Chopper Dave 22:23, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Fascinating. I saw that mentioned in the Cro-Magnon article. Might be interesting to add it here. It's along the lines of the work by Alexander Marshack. But I wonder if it was published. Maybe a brief mention. I'll maybe add it, if you don't. I really need to get back to this article and do the refs properly. Soon, I hope. TimidGuy 16:06, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

The star map/constellation information appears to be highly speculative. The only references are popular science mags and a few websites. There are no archaeological or historical scientific references noted, which I regard as problematic. Aglnl (talk) 03:51, 30 May 2013 (UTC)


 * DETAILed article and 27 fotos discussing careful measurements and correlation with modern constellation software walked back in time to the time of the cave drawings to prove the use of the cave paintings e.g. at time of summer solstice as the sun light walks across the images essentially telling a story: work by chantal jogues-wolkiewiez see http://www.astronomy2009.org/
 * what is jmissing is here in these caves and 7,000 years later at gobekli tepi is the careful depiction of a fully developed what some would argue religion, but in fact, it includes religion but is a depiction of the engine of creation ... ard ri sr lil AO 47.18.43.166 (talk) 14:09, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

It really seems like this should at least be mentioned as an existing issue, seems credible and seems weird to have it covered by major orgs like the BBC but intentionally left out here. 2601:249:601:97F1:812B:FE95:16DB:4B7F (talk) 02:12, 4 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Chantal Jegues Wolkiewitz has research too, but there isnt much references.Beyond silence 14:29, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

There are numerous publications on the subject (e.g. see https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4614-6141-8_116 and references in this article). I don't know if the suggestions have any credibility in mainstream academia. To me, there are some very obvious flaws to the ideas:
 * Orion's Belt has 3 stars, not 4. And in every culture, the 3-ness is part of the asterism (e.g. The Three Kings, the Three Sisters, the Three Pearls, the Hapj (made of the deer, pronghorn, and sheep). No culture I know of has ever considered there to be 4 stars in this asterism.
 * Whilst the "Pleiades" dots look similar to other drawings thought to be of Pleiades from other cultures (i.e. shows the main > mag 5 stars), in Lascaux they are in the wrong orientation with regard to Orion's Belt and to the bull, if assuming it is really Taurus.
 * Not all cultures consider the asterism we now called Taurus, the bull, to be a bull. There is a large assumption being made that the painters did - there isn't really any evidence of that from the painting itself, if you discount the dubious Orion's Belt and Pleiades assumptions. The argument is circular - it must be Orion's Belt and Pleiades because there is a bull in between, and it must be Taurus in-between because there's Orion's Belt and Pleiades.
 * There are plenty of other dot formations elsewhere in the paintings, which clearly DON'T show asterisms, e.g. below the megaloceros. It's quite a leap to assume most formations of black dots throughout the cave don't represent stars, except for these two.

I know this isn't the place to settle those views, but the above is to say I agree with not including these dubious and speculative claims. 175.100.60.201 (talk) 07:35, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

I think this topic should be treated seriously, given that there are academic peer-reviewed papers out there discussing it (e.g. Rappenglueck, sweatman & coombs). So the claims may be speculative but they are not at the level of "lunatic fringe". The article can, of course, express the fact that these claims are controversial, but not to mention them at all seems contrary to the goals of wikipedia. I'm happy to insert a couple of lines giving references and expressing doubts over the claims unless someone strongly objects. RayNorris (talk) 09:23, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

clean up, add sources
Hi! SuggestBot got me here. I am going make a few neutralizing alterations in the process. Statements like "famous for" and prehistoric Sistine chapels give the impression we want to prove something. I replace them if i can. However - talk to me ATBWikirictor (talk) 14:09, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

The man and buffalo section isn't rubbish
I've been meaning to find time to fix it. Eg "Tt is illuminating to note, in this regard, Georges Bataille’s observation of one of the most remarkable of Lascaux paintings, referred to earlier (Chap. 2, Sect. 2.6): A man, dead as far as one can tell, is stretched out, prostrate in front of a heavy, immobile, threatening animal. This animal is a bison, and the threat it poses is all the more grave because it is dying: it is wounded and under its open belly its entrails are spilling out. Apparently it is this outstretched man who struck down the dying animal with his spear. But the man is not quite a man: his head, a bird's head, ends in a beak. Nothing in this whole image justifies this paradoxical fact that the man’s sex is erect. Because of this, the scene has an erotic character; this is obvious, clearly emphasized, but it is inexplicable. Thus, in this barely accessible crevice stands revealed - but obscurely - a drama forgotten for so many millennia: it re-emerges, but it does not leave behind its obscurity. It is revealed, but nevertheless it is veiled. From the very moment it is revealed, it is veiled. But in these closed depths a paradoxical accord is signed, an accord all the more grave in that it is signed in this inaccessible obscurity. This essential and paradoxical accord is between death and eroticism. (Bataille 1981: 51-52)"

And "The Lascaux cave has many features which point to its use as a place where people gathered for cults, especially the magnificent frescoed Hall of the Bulls, mentioned previously. The shaft is a recess, a sort of holy of holies not easily accessed. Here the frescoed wall shows a thcrianthropc, a half-man/half-animal creature with the head of a bird and body of a man, with erect phallus. The right hand of the bird-man seems to be holding a stick, though there is no contact between hand and stick. The handle of the stick is also can ed in the form of a bird, perhaps a dove. To the bird-man’s left, a large bison lies dying, shot full of arrows. A woolly rhinoceros and a horse complete the scene. To interpret this enigmatic depiction as a representation of the sky, we must recall that because of precession the sky above the painters of the Lascaux cave was very different from ours. In those days, the north celestial pole was crossing the Milky Way. It was not close enough to any “pole” star, but it was not far from Delta Cygni, and so the great bird of the sky was seen to rotate closely tied to the pole. The Bird Man might thus be a celestial figure stretched across the Milky Way, the upper part constituted by stars from those constellations we call Cygnus and Vulpecula, while the lower part includes stars from our Aquila, Serpens. Hercules and Sagitta. The bird-headed staff may represent the polar axis (Rappenglueck 1998). If this is accepted, then the other figures also come to life as constellations: the three animals that surround the scene—a bison, a woolly rhinoceros and a horse are indeed recognisable as three large constellations associated, respectively, with the north-west (autumn), north-east (spring) and south, with the horse corresponding to the constellation we call Leo. The sky depicted in"

"In response lo Breuil. Bmaille comments that the bison could not have been disemboweled bv the thrust of the spear (which in the painting is clearly broken off at two-thirds of its length), and while this does not prove the man is not a hunter, it docs eliminate him as the cause of the bison's condition. I should add here that since there are no hunting scenes per se in Upper Paleolithic imager)', all things that look like weapons may be symbolic and relate to magic. Baiaille then quotes from II. Kirchner’s interpretation. According to the latter, it is not at all a question of a hunting accident. The prostrate man is not dead; rather, he is a shaman in the throes of an ecstatic trance. Kirchner, we arc told, has drawn on the idea of "a relationship between Lascaux civilization and the Siberian civilization of our own times.” A Siberian scene concerning the sacrifice of a cow is cited; posts topped by carved birds mark the road to heaven, to which the shaman will guide the sacrificed animal while he is unconscious (the birds being auxiliary spirits without whom the shaman could not undertake his aerial journey). This interpretation might account for the man’s erection (and it also supports S. Giedion’s argument that "this bird man is in fact standing upright at the moment of supreme exaltation"),10 but as Baiaille points out, Kirchner’s theory overlooks the bison anti its wound: "that is to say, it is probably that, in a sacrifice, a bison would be disemboweled? And has not Kirchner’s theory forced him to view the rhinoceros as independent of the rest of the scene? I lowever, if one inspects the actual Scene at Lascaux, one quickly discovers the groups unity and similarity in treatment.” The interpretations of other writers seem to be based on fantasies concerning shamanistic rites. Andreas Lommcl claims the scene is a battle between shamans, "a light in which only one of the contestants has assumed the shape of an animal.” Weston LaBarre suggests that a bird shaman has come to grief in the underground world of a reindeer shaman. Francois Bordes proposes that a bird-totem hunter was killed by a bison, and a man or the rhinoceros totem painted this picture of revenge: diseinbowelment by a rhinoceros. William Irwin Thompson states that the bison is’the Great Goddess coming to the shaman in the power vision that sets him apart from ordinary men."11' - read the bits preceding and after this quote also.

My point is that this seems to be one of the most discussed images at Lascaux and needs coverage. Doug Weller talk 14:54, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Agree with that. Johnbod (talk) 15:07, 3 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. To me the words "perhaps knocked down by a buffalo gutted by a saga; at his side is represented an elongated object surmounted by a bird, perhaps a propeller;" seem nonsensical, but perhaps that is simply a reflection of my reading age. Langcliffe (talk) 15:18, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

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Lascaux and copyright?
Under 'Pottery and Prints' the article contains the statement "the [Lascaux cave] images have been copyrighted." This seems strange to me and after some light googling I can't find any non-parody source for the Lascaux images being under copyright. Can someone shed more light on this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.53.100.233 (talk) 17:17, 9 May 2022 (UTC)


 * I've removed the section. It seems like nonsense to me, and the claim is unreferenced. It can be added back, if someone can find a proper reference. Langcliffe (talk) 21:51, 10 May 2022 (UTC)