Underground Gallery

Guy Astruc should have been concentrating on the road as he drove along the icy edge of the Lot River in southwestern France. But Astruc is a spelunker, always on the lookout for potholes to pop into. To him, the little frost-free spot he saw in a limestone cliff suggested a cave entrance that had become plugged up. He stopped to probe the spot with a crowbar. Stones and dirt caved in; warm air whooshed out. Suddenly Astruc was staring into a narrow tunnel. "I was alone," he says, "afraid to go in very far, or stay very long."

Stomach Crawlers. Astruc came back with fellow members of the Quercy Speleological Club of Cahors. They all crawled headfirst into the hole, soon found themselves in a passageway no more than 20 in. high. Exhaling to squeeze between rocks, rubbing their noses in the wet clay, they inched along. Then one of them saw carvings on the ceiling.

Next day the young explorers returned with cameras, lights and tracing paper. The more they searched the cave, the more paleolithic art they found. In all, close to 80 drawings were scratched into the rock. Among them were six deer, one complete horse and the heads or bodies of five others, an antelope, three handsome and complete bison, a bull, some mountain goats, and a catlike creature. Cavemen, it is believed, made images of the animals they hunted to gain power over them. There was a triangular fertility symbol, and one clearly visible figure of a man, headless, but obviously male.

Earth Movers. French Archaeologists place the ancient art work in two distinct periods. The first, Aurignacian, is roughly 25,000 to 30,000 years old, the other, Magdalenian, dates from 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. With the drawings fully authenticated (a thick layer of limy deposit, like candle wax, covers many of them, dismissing the possibility of a modern hoax), the cave is rated as a major archaeological find. Many art historians believe that cave art had magical meaning, purposely put in as cramped a space as possible in a sort of protective return to the womb. Though in an area famous for its subterranean paintings, its very magic may keep the new underground art gallery from ever becoming a tourist attraction. Only the hardiest visitors could crawl down to see the treasures 320 ft. below the surface of the Lot Valley.

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