Les bisons d’argile

Almost one km deep inside a cave in the French Pyrenees, in the most inaccessible chamber, there is which might be one of the most extraordinary prehistoric works of art ever produced: a couple of clay bisons 14.000 years old. The perfect rendering of the animals is only surpassed by the fact two clay sculptures have survived for such a long time.

One of the reasons for the incredible preservation is the sculptures are in a very secretive location that was unbothered for 14.000 years until the owner of the land, Count Louis Bégouëns, accidentally discovered the cave and entered with his two sons in 1912.

They explored the cave for two years before one of the teenage boys discovered a new passage behind a pile of broken stalactites. They had to crawl through a narrow passageway until reaching the hidden chamber, where they found the clay bisons.

The land is still owned by this family, and another son, Count Robert Bégouëns, is now the caretaker. The cave is not open to regular visits, and one can only enter once a year, at most, by direct invitation of the Count. This has made for a very good preservation strategy (a few archeologists do have permission to study the site) and the cave into a perfect time capsule.

The real mystery though is not in the bisons, but in a small adjacent chamber with a large pit of clay in the middle. There are 183 footprints in this room, but most are heelprints, which was incomprehensible to researchers. Why heelprints?

Then, the Bégouëns family had an idea: they invited 3 men from the San tribe of the Kalahari Desert. The San are one of the few people in the world who still follow a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and are expert trackers to a degree we can barely comprehend. They can learn many things by observing footprints: the sex and age of the person, if they were sick or injured, if they walked quickly or slowly, and even if they were afraid or relaxed.

The San men spent an hour in the chamber, discussing the heelprints, and this was their veredict: two people had been in the chamber 14.000 years ago, a man of about 38, and a boy of about 14 years old. They had come in several times to dig big chuncks of clay, but the heelprints were not random. They had walked on their heels intentionally, probably as some kind of ritual.

Among the San people, leaving a clear footprint is like a signature, because everyone knows everyone else’s footprints. The only way to conceal your identity is by walking on your heels.

Were the creators of the bisons trying to conceal who they were when they made the sculptures? We’ll never know.