This is a documentary by Werner Herzog, who received a unique permission from the French Ministry of Culture (this is their relevant site) to film in the Chauvet Cave, near Vallon-Pont-d'Arc, in the Ardèche Valley near the Rhone in southern France.
They are dated to 40 to 30,000 years old. This is much older than the 20,000-year-old images at Lascaux, France or the 17,000-year-old ones at Altamira, Spain. This means that they are the oldest known symbolic representations created by a human being in the world. The oldest art, perhaps (indeed almost certainly) the oldest human "religious" expression (since the scientists studying it believe they were perhaps created as a part of a "shamanistic" type ritual) in the world.
As art they are absolutely stunning, to equal anything done by the likes of Matisse or the best of Picasso. Very, very beautiful. Most of the images are of animals, but one is (as Herzog puts it in the film) of a woman's sex, basically a depiction of a kneeling woman's rear that flows seamlessly into the head of a bison like animal. The oldest picture of a human being.
Herzog worked under extreme restrictions, only being allowed into the cave twice, because previous experience at sites like Lascaux have shown that even small changes in the atmosphere of such a cave can destroy the images by introducing mold and other contaminants. The cave is also dangerous to remain in for long due to high levels of carbon dioxide and radon that can sicken and kill the unwary.
The entire experience of watching this film is meditative. Nearly everything he shoots and most of the commentary is fascinating. The landscape and cave are in one of my favorite places in the world, and are stunningly beautiful.
This is the Pont d'Arc, the cave is located nearby:
Pretty stunning landscape, really. Thirty thousand years ago it was surrounded by glaciers during one of the recent glaciations that have covered Europe and North America. If you've (say) read Clan of the Cave Bear (one of my Middle School reads, back then I soaked up historical fiction, and stayed up all night one night to finish that book when I was in 8th Grade) or seen a paleolithic Venus, you know will have an idea of what the culture that created these images is all about:
He shot the film in 3-D, and I must say that this is the first 3-D film I've seen where it actually makes sense and adds something to the movie. The walls of the cave, and the cavern itself leaps at you a bit, giving a real sense of how the drawings meld with and use the topography of the wall to convey a sense of motion and depth.
Herzog is the same documentarian who made the film about that idiot Timothy Treadwell, "The Grizzly Man," who got himself and his girlfriend eaten by a grizzly in Alaska in 2003, and the bear who ate them shot by Fish & Wildlife. Treadwell was a total asshole, but Herzog's film about him is fascinating.
So this is the second project I've seen by Herzog who has had a very long career, most of which I've managed to miss despite my love for documentaries. I saw him interviewed by Stephen Colbert, where Stephen strains to be funny (I love his show, but the interview is the least interesting part of the show, while the reverse is true I think of John Stewart.. ) but does get some interesting reactions from Herzog.
I do have to say that Stephen does hit on what seems to me one of the central issues in thinking about things like this: This story is about origins, about consciousness and self-awareness, which means this story has profound religious implications.
"How can the drawings be 32-40,000 years old when the earth was created only 6,000 years ago?" That's a question that strikes to the heart of what 40% of Americans apparently believe, that the universe is only 4 to 6,000 years old, following the calculations of the likes of Bishop Usher and other "fundamentalists" who've done the math for us on the genealogies in the Pentateuch and a timeline of the rest of the Bible.
The radio carbon dating they've done on the drawings indicates that the drawings were created over a span of thousands of years - 40 to 32,000 years ago - in a cave that was never inhabited by humans, only used as an apparent ceremonial site. There is what Herzog and the anthropologists working at the site take to an altar in the cave, where they surmise some sort of ritual or ceremony was performed. The cave was inhabited by extinct cave bears, who left thousands of bones and claw marks all over the cave. At some point over 15,000 years ago the cave was sealed by a great landslide, and then only discovered in 1994 by the explorer who gives the cave its name.
Stephen asks Herzog "Are you making any of this stuff up?" driving at his apparent tendency to embellish his stories. But that question can be leveled at the entire phenomena. All sacred narratives tend to run up against the scientific record in ways that from a positivistic perspective seem to undermine them.
The question of how this cave relates to the narrative in Genesis seems to me to be a valid one. But it's also finally an unanswerable one.
In my last review took a couple potshots at people who seek to reconcile that narrative (or any other sacred mythology) to the latest scientific consensus in a "literal" way. As I say, I think that's vulgar and stupid.
As I said there, I also think that people who think that science has "disproven the Bible" and the existence of God are even bigger idiots.
The debate between the two sides is tiresome and mindless.
I say that the narrative and the physical environment do not need to be reconciled according to our current knowledge, because as one scientist in the film says, we know almost nothing.
The more I live, the more it seems to me that humility and wonder are crucial to not being a jackass.
Which, incidentally is one of the things I accuse myself of being. I have been too often a victim of cognitive dissonance born of my own pride and arrogance, and am still tempted frequently to pass that door..
Then alternately been tempted to rain down judgements and preach, and call people names. Which I think is what I just did.. Again. Ach.
Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ, Υἱέ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἐλέησόν με τὸν ἁμαρτωλόν.
I've decided that needs to radically change. So, when at the end of the film Herzog makes an extraneous editorial comment about the caves by taking us to a tropical terrarium fed by the waste water from one of France's many nuclear power plants near the cave - the water expelled from a cooling tower that controls the heat of a reactor is very hot, and not radioactive - by showing us a pair of albino crocodiles kept there, and opining that we are ultimately no better than they, and that if they saw the drawings they would be unperturbed, implying that the universe entire is just as unknowing and so ultimately meaningless..
I just shook my head and pitied him. He shoots this gorgeous film, full of astonishing things, and still can't help himself from making a statement of chic nihilism to put it all in perspective for us.
What can you say? You look at something so beautiful, and still doubt the transcendence of the human soul?
Poor fellow.
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