In June '24, I visited Lascaux Cave - a Palaeolithic cave in France. Its grotto consists of a main cavern 66 feet wide and 16 feet high. It's  adorned with paintings - about 6000 representations of animals and mysterious iconography line the ceiling and walls, so dense they overlap. These paintings were made approximately 15,000 - 17,000 years ago.

 

The cave was found in 1940 by four boys investigating a foxhole. It opened to the public eight years later. It was closed in 1963, because artificial lights had faded the vivid colors of the paintings and the resulting influx of tourists brought ‘sicknesses’ - microbes that upset the cave ecosystem and damaged the artwork.

 

And so, I what I actually found myself in was a copy of the cave and its imagery, 200 metres away from the original. Walking through the closest version to the cave that we can now experience, I listened to the guide narrate various theories on the meanings of the markings, which were made with such care and effort, over generations.

 

It struck me that despite our best attempts, the ancient meanings are inevitably lost to us. What we are left with, though, is our ancient desire to communicate.