Lascaux and Göbekli Tepe Use the Same Symbols 5,000 Years Apart | Megalithomania

Hey Megalithomaniacs, here we are at Lascaux in France. This is incredible. The cave system, the museum, the whole visitor center, the fact they've recreated the whole cave system itself is something to behold. Now we're going to get in and take a look because this is Paleolithic. This dates back to up to 21,000 years ago, generally thought to be around 17,000 years old. And we're going to go through the cave. I'm going to show you a few clips of some of the paintings, the full reconstruction they've done, which is incredible. You must remember this was only discovered in really in 1940 by a bunch of kids in September of that year when their dog went through a hole in the ground up on this hill and they kind of slid down and found this entire cave system with over 2,000 paintings. They used 13 different colors, very technologically gifted whoever created this, and brilliant artists as well. So we're going to have a look through the cave and then we're going to come back here into the visitor center of the museum where we can show you a few more details, including the famous shaft scene, the only human figure, a dead figure with a sort of decapitated head that Martin Swetman writes about as being very similar in symbolism to what we find at Quebec-Lutépic on Pillar 43, suggesting a connection between these cultures. I believe there's something else going on here because we know there's a major summer solstice sunset alignment which beams into the cave and illuminates some of the paintings, which is incredible in its own right. And we know that 122 of the 130 caves studied in this area, the entrances are somehow aligned to the solstices or equinoxes, well beyond chance. But yeah, so this is an incredible visit, let's check it out. So this is a really interesting part of the reconstruction here, they've done a whole kind of area of the cave. I'll show you in more detail and on the scan that I got as well, but to me it just shows a very high level of sophistication for a possibly up to 21,000 year old site, although they think it's more likely 17,000 years, but it really was known to have been used for a few thousand years or at least a few hundred years. And so the fact that they were going into these caves and doing all this way back then just shows you there's a level of sophistication which underlies this hunter-gatherer group who were working in this area. But check this out, look at this, they've done this whole thing all the way around here, recreating an entire section of the cave. This is one of the lamps carved into a block of sandstone which was discovered in the shaft and it had marks of burning, whilst the one on the right is another replica, but this is again was found with the burning on it and some indentations as well. So you can see how impressive this is, this is just some of the cave paintings, we'll just sort of spin it around both ways from Lascaux which dates back to potentially up to 17,000 possibly over 21,000 years ago, which is quite amazing. You have them up here as well, there's this whole section they've recreated, I've actually got a scan of this so I'll put that in so you can have a look at it. But I want to show you the shaft scene, this is what's really interesting because there's this clear like very deep shaft in the whole part of the site which seems to indicate that this connection with Quebecois Tepe. So these are really interesting, check these out, so they had manganese, ochre, red ochre, white clay, there's also a stone mortar in there as well, a grinder and different colorants as well. I mean look at that, I mean this is quite a kind of artist's toolkit when you consider this goes back nearly 21,000 years. Check this out, this is a brilliant reconstruction they've done here. So we've got a flint chisel for engraving, we've got almost like a pencil or brush type thing, a stencil as well which we know they used here, a block of pigments, a tube for blowing the paint which was a technique they used. The number one there really gets me, that's just a flint chisel for the engraving because what we'll find is when we go back, when we look in the museum, so there's the flint chisel just there, I mean it's not, it's not big and but did they use obsidian as well because some of the 3D relief carvings are pretty impressive. I mean they're almost like a Becheli Tepe level but thousands and thousands of years earlier. So this bit's really interesting to walk through, look at this, so you've got a whole kind of avenue along the ceiling here, it's pretty impressive. So in this section here they're explaining, and Sian just pointed this out to me, that there's geometric shapes that underlie the actual paintings themselves and then there's multiple layers of different animals. It's not just one animal in one layer, there's different layers, there's arrows pointing upwards, there's things like this, so there's lots of like little codes in there that could suggest that they were recording myths. You can see it behind me here, yeah sorry about the coloring on it, but you can see the shaping, you can see the layers, you can see like the horses heads are in different directions which indicate movement, so there's lots of different elements here. It's not just a piece of art, there's sort of like a message, like a mythology recorded in the paintings themselves and you've got like a bull there with an auroch with heads facing one way and facing the other in different layers. Then you've got like these arrows or you know spears within it, then here you've got the arrows kind of going upwards into the horse. So what is going on here? So here we have the shaft scene, you can see the human figure there, this is the figure that it's got a bird head almost like an ibis, appears to be dead because it's kind of leaning backwards or lying down. Then you've got like an auroch, you've got other features here which Martin Swetman is convinced is related to Pillar 43 at Quebecois Temple. You can see the kind of what's a replica of the shaft kind of around here and the way you would have come in from the top up there, so that is pretty interesting. So yeah, so it's been really interesting coming here, I mean going inside this full-size replica of Lascaux itself, it was just incredible. I mean even though it's not the real thing, you can't go in there, there's many reasons why so much damage has been done since it was closed in 1963. It's only opened since you know 12 or 14 years or something like this, but a lot of damage was done. Now it's starting to heal itself apparently and so for now we've got this replica, we've got this amazing visitor center, you can see everything you know reconstructed, you're allowed to film in this part at least. I did get some shots in the main one as well, but anyway I hope you enjoyed this visit to Lascaux. It's a quick visit, I just wanted to show you what is going on here and it's well worth a visit. It's not inexpensive, you just need to book in advance, but there are quite a few caves in this area you can actually go in, that's the thing. La Benefale cave is one of them, you've got a few others you can book in advance, you can't film or anything in them, but there's a lot going on here. I mean the fact is there's like hundreds of caves literally just in this area and the fact that many of them are lying to the solstices is an area of research I'm going to be getting into in more detail in my book I'm working on with JJ Ainsworth, so yeah let me know what you think in the comments. Although it's a reconstruction it's still incredible. Thanks for watching Megalithomaniacs and we'll see you next time.