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According to recent estimates the practice of painting and engraving walls in remote galleries of uninhabited caves in what is now southern France and northern Spain went on for more than 20,000 years. That is roughly in the period between 35,000 and 10,000 years before present (BP).¹ Despite the early efforts at establishing a chronology of the caves based on the increasing complexity and style of the paintings, heavily dependent as they were on common prejudices relating to the direction of history and evolution, there now appears to be general agreement that the oldest cave known to us thus far² — the Chauvet cave in Ardèche — is by no means the most "primitive" when it comes to painting techniques, rendering of perspective and disposition of the paintings and the engravings.³ Thus, we are dealing with a cultural practice that has survived dramatic climatic changes and lasted (or was constantly reinvented) for a period so long that it is hardly conceivable for us: How could it have been sustained? Why did it not change more than it did? Why this relative constancy of motifs? And, of course: Why paint anything as deep under a mountain as is humanly possible?

DOI: 10.1057/9781137271976_4

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