[Music] foreign [Music] over the past 150 years we have found many stunning prehistoric images the majority are fascinating representations of animals for the most part we don't know what they mean and we would like to understand what motivated these artists historians are trying to discover the reasons for the presence of these artworks deep underground and to reveal the meaning of this cave painting [Music] [Applause] recently one of them struck by the naturalism of this art wondered if they might not be elements of stories is it possible to find modern qualities like representation of movement animation or graphic narrative perhaps even the first steps that would lead to Motion Pictures [Music] of Cinema attributed to the Lumiere brothers and Thomas Edison in the late 19th century be much more ancient than that something that goes back way before the optical gadgets or ingenious inventions like chronophotography building on this intuition markazima sets out to explore the very nature of these images and their purpose to demonstrate that prehistoric man was just as fascinated by images and by movement as we are today [Music] in the sides of a steep valley gouged out by the river ardesh in the south of France can be found the Chauvet cave which became once again accessible in 1994 having been sealed for more than Twenty Thousand Years by a fortuitous rockfall [Music] Paleolithic artists decorated the walls of this cave with a fabulous bestiary aurox rubbed shoulders with horses woolly rhinoceroses mammoths lions and bison all of which have been captured in a remarkably lifelike manner markazama is one of the rare prehistorians who works in this Sanctuary with the aim of interpreting one of the most extraordinary legacies of cave art left by our Homo sapiens ancestors [Music] the discovery of the Chauvet cave confirmed that movement was essential to Paleolithic art what strikes me looking at these paintings is the feeling of Life the prehistoric artists knew how to analyze these movements they saw in nature and to reproduce them on the rock [Music] some of the figures in this cave seem to contain a representation of movement [Music] we're near the panel of the horses in the Alcove of the Lions and we can see this bison it's an extremely interesting bison because it's gapping its mouth is open it's an animal that is panting its legs are extended and if you take a closer look at its legs you can see that in fact it doesn't have four legs eight legs are being drawn [Music] and these eight correspond to two successive positions taken by the animal when it gallops to me that's very important because it's the demonstration of a sort of breakdown of movement look the artist wanted to recreate the animal's rapid movement so in fact he superimposed several successive positions on the image [Music] this image showing the breakdown of an animal's movement in several phases is almost 40 000 years old but is it a unique example has the same technique of representation of movement being used in other caves and during other periods of prehistory once again it was in the Limestone walls of the r-desh gorge a short distance from the Chauvet cave that some elements which might answer these questions were discovered [Music] we are a stone's throw from the Columbia cave where a hollow in The Rock was explored for the first time after the second world war on the rock wall are some particularly accomplished Engravings which are more recent than the paintings in Chauvet [Music] they're very small figures very realistic packed with detail we're going to employ a photogrammetric technique we'll take photographs and then we'll reconstitute the relief of those photos using our algorithms you see that on the fur the head the legs there the multiple legs it's going to be tough now once we've got the texture that's it but it's true that in terms of relief it's extremely fine the technique known as dense correlation means a 3D reconstruction of the figure of the Ibex can be produced based on the high definition photographs that's good are you zooming in on the head good we've got all the details there you can see the fur well [Music] this engraving of an ibex from the Columbia cave is very important because of its extreme sophistication The Contours of the legs are not entirely shown they're just little lines which make up sort of vibrations or blurs a little like what you can see in animations comic strips or mangas today Mark has identified in this figure another case of breaking down movement but the use of these multiple images has divided Specialists some think they correspond to Mistakes by the artist While others believe there are subsequent additions to the initial work Engravings discovered in Portugal at the end of the 20th century tend to reinforce Mark's Theory for a long time it was believed that prehistoric artists had only decorated the walls of caves but a sight in the Valley of the KOA a tributary of the river Duro contains several hundred Engravings and shows that they also worked in the open air Antonio Baptista is the director of this vast site which extends along both banks of the river KOA he takes Mark to show him one of the site's most stunning works created around twenty thousand years ago we are looking at the most beautiful and perhaps the most exceptional engraving in the KOA Valley it's an ibex with two heads at the center of a composition with a female you see and another figure in the front perhaps a mile the figure is also in movement it's walking and it's turning its second head perhaps to look at the female which is here [Music] this chipping out is a technique which takes a great deal of time so these two heads are not a mistake they're really intentional yes because the figure is very well depicted perhaps initially with an incision to Mark out the lines then afterwards with very fine picking and then polished there's no doubt that it was the artist's intention to do it like that so is this a proof of a representation of movement being broken down yes of course it's deliberate because we find this breaking down of movement in other Engravings in the valley and always from the same phase to the oldest more than 20 000 years ago what we call breaking down movement is a way of showing that movement animated through stages not only Frozen in time it's animated movement and the intention of Paleolithic artists when they put two or three heads on a figure is that the visitor the audience who sees the engraving sees movement sees the artist's intention to give movement to this figure it's not a figure fixed in time that's what I think thank you these amazing figures carefully and deliberately picked out of the rock go a long way towards backing up Marcus Amos Theory by showing a breakdown of movement the artists were almost certainly trying to express the Dynamics of these animals Behavior despite the fascination inspired by the beauty of cave paintings this aspect of prehistoric art has been largely ignored the respected prehistorian jean-clutt with whom Mark works at Chauvet gives us an idea of the ground covered by Mark's research people have always observed that there is movement in prehistoric art but Mark azima's work is different he's the first person to have studied this in a scientific manner I'd say in a systematic manner he started from this Research into movement and he asked could there be any movement in this picture here or in this picture here and he found it in places that no one had thought about these representations of movement have intrigued prehistorians for many years even the most celebrated of them Andrea took a rather symbolist vision of prehistoric art in the 1960s and 70s for example it was something that didn't especially interest he was more interested in determining the species which for him had a female value or a male value so it was the species that characterized it not so much the details but the Roman movement was considered a detail Mark has put it back in the foreground [Music] by revisiting a huge number of cave and rock art sites Mark has shown the importance of the representation of movement he has analyzed thousands of prehistoric images of animals and he has observed that this breakdown of movement occurred in many sites and throughout all periods of prehistory [Music] more than half of the images I studied represent animals in movement in you in several dozen cases the movement has been broken down over several successive images from a graphic point of view that translates as a multiplication of the Contours of either the whole body or just part of it like for this horse from La school with the head or the whole of the body here in La Marsh on this engraved plaque where you can see that the dipping movement of the front of the body has been reproduced in four Images these prehistoric examples of breakdown of movement inevitably remind us of certain stages in making a cartoon but they have not yet been shown to historians of Cinema what is the current version of the birth of the moving picture according to a specialist in animated film like Dominique Willoughby if we take Cinema as the actual moving image and not just the suggestion of movement we can cite begin in 1830. one can observe a first generation which is graphic like these discs behind me these are Engravings lithographs or chromolithographs they're cardboard and they start with a drawing it was two scientists the Belgian Joseph plateau and an Austrian named Simon Stamper who around 1833 discovered the possibility of creating the illusion of movement from a series of drawings seen through a slot Stamford called this invention the stroboscope [Applause] guess what did people find so fascinating about this invention it was that long-held dream of a picture that starts to move by itself in some way or at least the illusion this gave I think that Fascination has always been there the visual effect of stroboscopy gave rise to a profusion of optical toys with the series of praxinoscopes Emil Reno continually improved these spectacular animations oh [Music] then came an aid that has been called photographic although today we prefer to call it argentic or silver because the term photographic has become ambiguous with the Advent of digital this is the age of Edison and The Lumiere this kind of Cinema combined photography with a series of discoveries emerging from developments in stroboscopy this new technique was so fascinating that it meant the wonderful graphic animations of the distant past were left forgotten we have come back to the idea that Cinema was exclusively a form of photographic reproduction which was the widely held belief in the film World from the 1920s to the 60s animation and graphic Cinema have to some extent been seen as a more noble art form and so too as a result we look at the past differently because that's also the question it's always a rereading of the past if anyone is dedicated to a continual re-reading of the past it's Mark as Emma this time it's not in the darkness of a cave that he encounters the latest Stone to add to his edifice but in the National Antiquities Museum in San Jose near Paris [Music] among the thousands of extremely rare objects collected during the first cave discoveries in the 19th century is an astonishing engraving the lion freeze this piece was found in the cave of lavash in the Pyrenees and has been dated to the last period of Paleolithic art around thirteen thousand years ago there's the large fragment to the left which is actually made up of two fragments stuck back together and then the little fragment on the right which completes it you can see that they are lime but they don't go all the way up so we couldn't stick the two together in the center of this bone a lion is running and on each side there are other incomplete figures of lions let's give all my thoughts really extraordinary is this central figure which represents a cat in full extension as it runs it has a fabulous realism when you consider the fragment of the object to the right you realize that the animal is represented in a different position with its limbs more gathered under the body in other words perhaps in a position just before or just after that represented by the central figure these three depictions of lions represent very precisely three successive moments of the animal running by comparing this to the running action of a modern cat or even a lion there's almost a perfect correspondence with the animal's successive movements once reanimated using modern techniques the Precision of the observation of the Lions movements becomes clear it involves a second form of breakdown of movement using the juxtaposition of successive images meaning the images follow on one after the other like snapshots and represent a complete movement this variant on the breakdown of movement also inevitably recalls the early stages of making a cartoon how are these discoveries perceived by Dominique Willoughby the specialist in animated motion pictures I've observed in caves and also on prehistoric objects images with representations which associate successive images through superimposition and through juxtaposition and I've tried to see what the result is once these movements are put together it's true this remains very theoretical but you'll see it's quite spectacular so can I animate this with the player there are two positions for the head some are quite fragmentary it's just the main lines what is quite remarkable is that the whole of the body is handled this way the limbs the tail even the body itself seems to be slightly vibrating and especially the head and the neck so this is really the most accomplished example of this breakdown of movement in prehistoric times that's very impressive even if the reanimation that you create was only possible recently using modern techniques of image animation in any case what is striking is that they went to Great pains they really correctly observed the phases but like certain painters of the 17th and 18th centuries until the invention of Animation they were obliged to express this movement with a strategy of fixed spatial images the spatialize either through superimposition or through showing the breakdown in sequence so there's a genuine continuity in other words the desire for movement in the images is like the desire to fly Aviation was invented at the same time as Motion Pictures but men have always dreamed of flying recompositions that I've done reflect what the combinations of image could have looked like if they'd been able to do it if they had the means exactly to run them all together if they had the means it works what's more from a theoretical point of view the recomposition works so that validates the theory that this really is breaking down on the other hand it poses the question of the existence of any emerging mechanisms to do this that would be a major Discovery we Cinema historians would be undone if it was revealed there were earlier technical means for the animation of images according to the historian prehistoric artist worked almost like the early animation artists of the 19th century without succeeding in reanimating these movements through some sort of mechanism that was the boundary that Mark azama's work had long come up against until an Arden prehistorian Floren River told him about a fascinating discovery foreign [Music] the image of this animal projected Mark more than two decades back into his past at the start of his research he had come across a remarkably similar image that of a reindeer represented on both sides of a Sandstone slab some 15 000 years old which had been found in the Easter eats cave in the French Basque country Mark had an intuition that there could be a link between these two images as if they recounted two moments in the life of the same animal [Music] hello how are you I'm fine how are you I got the photos you sent me what you've done is really extraordinary what's incredible is that it reminds me of an observation I made more than 20 years ago regarding a slab of sandstone from isterritz which also fits in your hand can you see something you can turn and on both sides there's a picture of a reindeer on one side you've got the animal standing and on the other it has its legs flexed and that really reminded me of what you sent me are they the same size it's really the same animal but on either side of the object as I said I made that observation in 1990 which I then published that I then completely forgot it as if I subconsciously said to myself it's not possible they surely hadn't got as far as that and now when I look at it it's the only explanation Mark is known florally there for about 10 years floral reconstructs all sorts of prehistoric objects to understand their function but he had never managed to figure out what the engraved round object pierced in the center like these from the luxury bass site were used for if all of these round pieces have always intrigued me because sometimes they are very thin which poses a slight problem if you want to make a button out of them there's also the fact that they're engraved on both sides not all of them but a lot are engraved on both sides so I was looking for an answer in the realm of jewelry because there's a hole in the middle so it's something that was hanging and thereby one could see both sides of the piece but then thinking about movements which turn I thought about the thermotrope the optical toy that's an object where you have a different image on each side of a disk and the association of the two create a third image for example you have a bird a cage and that makes a bird in a cage I knew how that worked and so from looking at this more closely I thought that's funny on one side it's got its legs extended and head up and on the other side it has a different posture but it could be the same animal and that's where I left it and when I saw that you were suggesting that certain individuals might be the same one I thought that's it there's the same animal on two different sides one legs extended one leg's bent so it's the same thing to show how this Paleolithic object Works Flora sets out to recreate one using the identical techniques used 14 000 years ago we know the exact process used to make this because in caves like the one at Mazda we found where one came from a perforated shoulder blade good [Music] that's it yes perfect yeah I just have to finish the polishing with a piece of sandstone then I'll start Engraving that will be one of the four legs and that will be the other one now we'll position the hole which will go about there so you see the hole is in the heart of the animal I'm clearly writing its vital organs that's also the side on which you hunt a right-handed man will hunt an animal which heads to the left because the movement to shoot is much more natural so we turn our piece like that now you can really see it was a much more voluminous torso when it takes a bullet or an arrow or whatever it has this effect of immediate tensing it bounds in the air like that trying to escape what's happening to it because it hasn't understood that it's already too late we can really see a very strong narrative theme which probably becomes fully symbolic in other words an animal's passage from life to death and for artist Hunters who are used to observing this kind of thing and who themselves survived in an environment that was sometimes challenging that certainly meant something [Music] yeah foreign [Music] [Music] yes let's see what it looks like oh you pass it through twice yes in fact it's a figure of eight [Music] okay you twisted a bit in fact it has to be taught to stay on the axis [Music] intuition in making these Rings is the same as marks they are not mere ornaments but an actual mechanism which tells the story of an animal's death foreign within the limitations of the technology of their materials and their skills they couldn't have done any better a human being today if he or she was put in the same conditions with the same material limitations wouldn't be able to surpass that what is quite challenging and yet fundamental is that at the moment as if by chance they produced an optical toy witch in a way was the start of a long Evolution which probably resulted in Motion Pictures [Music] this object suggests a closer lineage than ever between the creativity of prehistoric artists and the precursors of movies could it be the missing link between the breakdown of movement and the reanimation of images even if it is not strictly speaking animation of movement like that of the Bison legs and Chauvet or the Ibex at Columbia what will the expert who runs the conservatory of Cinema techniques at the cinematec from says make of this Paleolithic object their mutascopes mutascopes they used to appear in Fairgrounds assistant what's that it's called a kinora or a flip book if you turn the handle to make the images flip on Laurel manoni is all the more interested in Marcus Emma's research since the cinema text collection includes the manuscript by an English collector who in the early 20th century had already established a link between movies and prehistoric art we have here the collection of an Englishman called will day who was the first collector in the history of Cinema and who was convinced that the moving picture could in fact be traced back to prehistoric times he produced a manuscript for a huge book that sadly he never published in which he entitled 25 000 years to trap a shadow he went back to the time of cave dwellers because he had found a photograph that showed a wild boar with eight legs a board that had been photographed in the Altamira cave in Spain So based on this eight-legged boar he became convinced that this was in fact the earliest representation of an animal in motion will day's Theory did not capture the attention of film Specialists any more than it did prehistorians will it be any different from Mark's hypothesis I wondered for a long time if such a mechanism existed it so happened that recently with my friend Flora Rivera we reproduced the type of object that was fairly widespread in prehistoric times which is a cut-out disc and you can see on one of them we have an Izzard on both sides of the piece and by spinning it you really have the impression of combining the movement that's magnificent the superimposition is really perfect only the legs change absolutely this perfectly framed so that the images are superimposed once it spins so in your opinion does this really correspond to the definition of a thermotrope not in the classic meaning of the term because the thermotrope has sold in 1826 was made to superimpose two images in such a way that they would combine together and when it was spun the full image was produced so for me it's not strictly the thermotrope As We Know It in a way it's of a different order I'd say it's more of a forerunner of chronophotography so ultimately is this much closer to pre-cinema with this type of object yes apparently one has to be cautious but we can say that perhaps there is effectively desire behind this to represent movement I like what you say about this desire to show movement because that's really what you feel when you look at this type of object but also at the scale of all Paleolithic Arts somewhere there's an urge towards Motion Pictures through this object when you talk of a desire for Motion Pictures naturally some people would accuse you of teleologism but in the etymological meaning of the term I agree with you in other words they wanted to use cinematography or the writing of movements because there is not only the wish to represent movement but there's also the wish to represent a duration the passage of time which is typically the very notion of Cinema so in my view we are dealing with the origins of the cinematographic spectacle as we understand it in the modern sense of the term a spectacle which allows a scene to be repeated on a loop which takes place in a movement over a period of time within a given framework it's much more than one might have imagined I think there's something decisive which is playing out in favor of Mark Asim as theories this is a leap forward in the science of what is called pre-cinema which is a term I don't like in the science of cinematography of the writing of movement it's miraculous Little Wheel shows that prehistoric artists managed to create a dynamic link between two images of a single action thereby producing a graphic relationship and telling a micro story with two images according to Mark cave walls were also used to tell stories several types of graphic conventions have been identified when you're faced with these major compositions in Chauvet or other caves you're struck by the differences in scale of certain representations some animals are shown life-sized such as big lions which can be alongside mammoths which are shown a few inches high when you look at the great panel of the end Cavern in the shoevik cave or the big composition in the Hall of bulls in Lasko the freeze of the mega cirros in kunyak when you look closely at the panel of bison in the cave when it's tempted to make comparisons with an overall shot or establishing shot in cinema other conventions have been highlighted by academics and colleagues notably the rhetorical figure of synergy this rhetorical figure consists in representing the whole by a part for example a head or a horn is enough to signify the whole animal this technique is found in a dazzling way in the panel of lions in the Chauvet cave where there's a series of about 20 heads and those 20 heads are enough to represent a group in other words each head signifies an individual If You observe in closer detail you can see that only two individuals are shown with legs extended that's all it takes to create the overall effect and to illustrate the dynamic of a group of predators bearing down on their prey these graphic conventions allow for accounts of actions to be depicted on the walls of Chauvet and in other Caverns but the way they are applied perhaps sets out to create wider narrative by associating the actions with one another Mark is seeking to demonstrate that the real initiators of graphic narrative that can be found throughout the history of all societies are no doubt Paleolithic man the panel of the lions in Chauvet could be one of the most spectacular examples of the Mastery of graphic narration in the Paleolithic era but this demonstration is no easy matter Shield to Zelo who is in the process of recreating the rock wall and reproducing the paintings has good Insight on the topic [Music] through imitating the gestures of the Paleolithic artists he knows better than anyone the possible intentions of these artists and our limitations in trying to interpret their work what you have to reproduce is the energy the dynamic of the stroke it's the deepest part of the cave certainly the most secret part and there's the morphology of the rock which is very particular with lots of Curves lots of movements it's very tortured and they've used that for the dramatization but is this depiction really accessible to us how should one read these images if we want to understand their meaning we must first be able to decode them what link can we establish between these images we can see that the link is not simple for us there isn't a line for the ground with little animals placed nicely above it with a perspective that we're used to the smallest being the furthest away the biggest being closest and so on the scientists who found themselves before these lions and bison for the first time did not know how to interpret their postures Jean-Claude the first scientific director of the Chauvet cave turned to experts in animal behavior known as ethologists we prehistorians we only have rather simple ideas I can say that this is a bison or that's a lion and that's about it so I called on specialists in live animals I brought in Craig Packer who's a specialist in lions and he gave us some very precise information for example he identified the males and females for us he told us that one's a male and I remember saying to him but it doesn't have a mind and he said no that's because the male of the cave lion had no mind that's something that has been proved there was another panel nearby which has two lions which are nearly 10 feet tall and in that case you can see the genitals the scrotum of the male and it doesn't have a Mane so this confirms it this was the first time we'd seen this proof in prehistoric art in order to confirm his interpretation of the great panel in the end Gallery Mark goes to meet Craig packer at his lion Research Center in the heart of the Serengeti Park in Tanzania the memory of discovering the paintings at Chauvet is still Vivid for the ethologist it was really fantastic I've never had such a profound experience in my professional career of being so emotionally sword with pictures do you think it's legitimate to compare an extinct species like the cave line with the African line of today you know cats are cats whether they're leopards whether they're Lions even house cats or cats and you see that cat-like behavior in some of those paintings and you feel like yes this is a painting of an animal that is drawn from life and the artists are showing us something about the way they live definitely this is a hunting scene we've got several lines all aiming in the same direction they're focused on these bison right here who've got their backs turned be the right way for the lines to approach them without being detected well in terms of males and females you know some of them have this extra coloration through here from the ear down and I wonder if those might be the males we can see the majority are adult individuals but wouldn't there be some young ones involved in the hunt when Lions actually hunt especially something as big and dangerous as a bison then the Cubs would be left safely behind so I think if these are really meant to be younger animals I don't think they'd be literally going with them maybe there is some symbolism here a few yards from this panel on the other side of the end Gallery in this freeze which is about 10 yards to the left we see Lions which have also been shown in different attitudes what do you think of this type of attitude yeah these two the more clearly drawn of the of the figures here are definitely stalking they've got their heads down and they're looking in the same direction foreign the behavior of prehistoric Lions Craig decides to show Mark some modern day lions he hopes to find a group quickly thanks to the transmitter collars that his team has fitted to certain females [Music] [Music] the signal leads them to a blisteringly hot plane [Music] they're sleeping so we have seven adult females and there's seven Cubs various ages out here during the dry season there's not much for these lines to catch during the daytime the only hope they have is catching a warthog and that's actually fairly easy for just one line to catch by yourself and The Others May just watch back up in the Woodlands the hunting is much different because there's much more cover for the lines to hide behind again it may not always be cooperative unless we see them going after a very big dangerous prey animal like a buffalo when there's a buffalo that takes the whole group all the adult females are being on top of that Buffalo the males will be working on as well thank you that's when we see the most consistent hunting Behavior as a group is when it's big slow and dangerous can now check whether his theory that the different elements of the panel of lions is a sort of great Saga can be confirmed from an ethological point of view when you arrive in this Gallery in fact you enter from here and you see the first moment from the hunt and perhaps this second moment which is the hunt itself so in your opinion do you think we can draw a link between these two moments and consider them two sequences of the same hunt so you think there's a connection between this side of the panel and that one over there you know that makes a lot of sense because this picture over here this is like they first spotted the prey and so a visitor coming into the cave this is the first thing they would see it's just like a preamble but then we get here and it could be those same lines maybe even the top and bottom because this could be the male again here and the female down here with more females now we're getting deeper into the hunt we have all this action down here as we're moving forward the whole thing makes a lot of sense now if you have that left hand tied to the right it is such a masterpiece there's no other way to look at it after spending some time with Mark and listening to his ideas about it that's really opened my eyes further and I think there's a lot that I've learned in the last few days and I'm now much more comfortable imagining that that left panel would have been the first thing seen like in a tapestry before you get to the right hand panel and then you see the linkages then with those bison and then the Bison leaving just all kinds of things happening that are connected together it does seem like the overall impression is of telling a story an ethological Viewpoint confirms the observational skills of the prehistoric artists and also allows an understanding of the meaning of the sequence represented on the cave wall justifying the spatial organization of this narrative other recent discoveries suggest that the spectator was at the center of the attention of the prehistoric cave artists this is what a Belgian academic is trying to demonstrate by studying The Works in a richly decorated Spanish cave be careful slippery the El Castillo cave is in the cantabrian mountains near the Atlantic coast obviously all these motives are not as spectacular as those that were traced before today we can look at the points the lines the signs and these different motives which give us some useful information homographic techniques of the people of that time the city book the two prehistorians push onto the deepest part of this immense cave system to examine the biggest work on the site the man bison stalagmite we're standing in front of the stalagmite pillar of the outline evokes the figure of a vertical bison here you can clearly see the dorsal arch with the black line that has been drawn on in fact a detailed examination reveals that at the bottom it is not bison feet that have been depicted but the legs and feet of a human this pillar is also remarkable because when it is lit to make the motive appear a shadow falls on the wall which reproduces the same subject that of the man bison what is spectacular is that you can clearly see that there was a sophisticated lighting effect exactly you have to imagine suitable lighting which would give a real representation through light [Music] we can clearly see the figure of the man bison stand out in Shadow with the curve of the horn which is produced thanks to the stalagmite that has been sculpted the front part of the head with the snout here the body and on the other side the back of the head with the dorsal Arch this man bison sculpture illustrates the degree of sophistication of the use of relief for graphic expression and the role of lighting in cave art by extension this also tells us that one or more viewers were expected to enjoy this spectacle but do other examples of staging graphic representations exist in other caves more than anywhere else you can really gauge the combination that might have existed between the configuration of the cabin itself and the visitors as they move through the Galleries and their gaze moved when you enter the Hall of the Bulls it's taking the whole composition you have to turn your head and follow the dynamic with your gaze which is in some ways comparable to a panoramic effect [Music] you continue your visit and at this point you move and physically enter the central passage which is a very narrow Corridor in which the visitor must squeeze and where the ground was much higher in the Paleolithic period and you find yourself totally immersed in a graphic tunnel moving forward you discover the decoration which unfolds all around and you become aware at that moment that there are several types of scene Stags bellowing Bulls confronting one another and so on [Music] the last sequence shown perhaps a representation of a horse falling which initially is in the midst of plunging but at the far end of the central passage the legs are in the air and are wrapped around the rock wall the question of the meaning of these representations remains open but we nonetheless have this feeling of graphic narration which runs through the whole cavity which combines with symbolic Elements which mean you really have the sensation these Paleolithic artists put together something very complex which unfortunately will remain very mysterious for a long time to come recent discoveries suggest that many of these narratives and dramatizations were destined for prehistoric Spectators but were these stories only told in graphic form did they only address the eye or did they also entertain the ear of cavemen the main body of research into this area has been carried out by A musicologist Yeager reznikov who also teaches at the University of philosophy in Paris his work on Ancient Christian song led him to look back further and to note man's remarkable aptitude for choosing or constructing places with resonance for their ritual uses here [Music] we are [Music] invited by a prehistorian who was interested in the question of whether caves must also resonate we know there are Parts which resonate more than others but no one had really studied the Resonance of caves there'd been no apparent reason but he was interested in this so I came to this Cave the portel Cave in the Aries and I have the habit whenever I'm in a place which is likely to resonate to carry out some simple tests [Music] and the thought immediately came to me surely there's a bearing on the placement of the images and by good chance because in every Discovery there's always an element of chance in the portal Cave there's an absolutely extraordinary connection between the placement of the images and the sound quality having observed this link between cave paintings and Acoustics in the portel cave Diego resnikov found that other caves present the same qualities including those at Neo in the Pyrenees [Music] [Music] there are seven or eight Echoes there's marvelous resonance as you can hear this can be measured Naturally by the duration of the sound and the number of Echoes [Music] foreign [Music] all the sounds resonate well so we can say it's like a magnificent Romanesque Chapel from that point of view decorated with remarkable paintings and drawings the fundamental contribution of Jago reznikov's research is to bring the sound element into the analysis of the image in a strict sense from there there's nothing incompatible in thinking that these images were the basis for a narrative as we've shown but these stories could be brought further to life of the visitor through a commentary they could have been put to music through song and musical instruments as archeology has demonstrated one can also note the existence of dance representations in the magdalenian art of the upper Paleolithic so these people danced played music we can imagine that these sound elements were linked to the image it will probably never be possible to know the exact nature of the stories portrayed on the cave walls did they correspond to shamanic or initiation rights were they the expression of myths or religious beliefs the mystery remains intact but the graphic analysis of the decoration of the end Gallery in the Chauvet cave reveals a complex narrative composition in which one can read an account of a hunt where Lions prey on bison this freeze is a remarkable representation of the key stages of this hunt stalking charging threatening combat and the kill as the ethologist Craig Packer confirmed besides their skill in engraving a scene on a disc and animating it these Homo sapiens People Like Us according to prehistorians also knew how to tell stories using graphic techniques of unimagined sophistication [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you and then [Music]