Cave of Forgotten Dreams Page #5

is that we realize

that archeology today

is not a heroic adventure

with spades and picks

but high-tech scientific work

that's done

with incredible detail.

Really millimeter by millimeter,

the sediments are removed

in these deposits

the age of Grotte Chauvet

and our sites,

between 30,000

and 40,000 years ago.

And this detailed work

allowed Maria

to identify a whole range

of finds

that she was able

to piece together.

Maybe you can explain

how that worked out.

- Yes, we were doing

an inventory

of all the artifact pieces.

Some of the pieces came

from the 1970s,

from the first years

of excavation,

and these were

really small pieces.

You can see here

in this picture.

The tiny ivory pieces

remained unexplained

for a full three decades.

- And 31 pieces had

a very significant look.

We found pieces with a part

of the finger holes

and with notches on the side,

and with these pieces,

I thought already

that it could be

a part of an ivory flute.

Of course, the question

was very important

how this flute was made.

And you can see here

on the long axis

there is a split

going all over the flute,

and inside the two halves,

they hollowed the flute out.

And these little notches

along this axis, along the split

helped to refit these two halves

together very precise.

This flute is only one

of eight in all

so far recovered from this area

of southwestern Germany.

The caves here

have no paintings

but yield many other objects

of art.

- In this cave,

the Geissenkloesterle cave,

many very important findings

from the Ice Age were made.

We found some little ivory

statues of bear and mammoth... -

a very tiny mammoth,

very lovely.

And in 1992, I was part

of the excavation team.

People lived here about 30,000,

and in that time,

it was very cold here,

because the Alp Mountains

were covered by a glacier

about 2,500 meters thick.

And in the valley down there,

reindeer and mammoth

were passing,

and it was very cold.

And that's the reason why

I'm dressed up like an Inuit.

We presume that in this way,

the people of the Ice Age

were clothed

by reindeer fur

and boots made of reindeer fur

and reindeer leather,

because otherwise

you couldn't stand the cold.

One of the most important finds

we made in this cave

was a very tiny flute made

out of the radius of a vulture.

Astonishing on this flute

is that is... -

that it is pentatonic,

and this is the same tonality

we are used to hear today.

And if you like, I'll try to

play some small tunes for you.

And when I first reconstructed

the instrument

and tried to play some tunes,

I came across these ones.

Sounds a little bit

like Star-Spangled Banner.

Back in France,

near Chauvet Cave,

explorers

using more primal techniques

in search of still-hidden

underground chambers

roam the landscape.

Professional cave explorers

have techniques for finding

underground chambers,

because there are air currents.

So they use the back

of their hands or their cheeks

to feel for a faint draft of air

that may be coming

out of the cave.

I'm trying to do things

differently,

as I have the habit of using my

sense of smell in my profession.

So I try to sniff the smells

coming from the interior

of a cave.

Here, I didn't smell anything

except the exterior landscape.

Outside you can smell the earth,

the wild thyme, the ivy.

You can smell a range of things

but nothing specific

related to a cavern

that's been closed

for thousands of years.

This is my personal technique,

because I design perfumes.

It's a matter of trying

to experience it

in a different manner.

So I've been... - I've always

created perfumes,

and most notably,

I was president

of the French Society

of Perfumers

for some years and...

There are plans

to build a theme park

for tourists

with a precise replica

of the cave

a few miles from here.

This replica may even contain

a re-creation

of the odor

of the prehistoric interior.

- Evidently, the odor

you can smell right now

is quite attenuated.

It is very subtle.

There are not many emanations,

but our imagination permits us

to try and reconstruct

the scene,

the scene with its odors

from 25,000 years ago,

with all the animals that

would have been found there... -

bears, wolves, perhaps even

rhinoceroses, and man... -

the presence of their lives,

meaning burnt wood, resins,

the odors of everything

from the natural world

that surrounds this cave.

We can go back

with our imagination.

Herzog:

With his sense of wonder,

the cave transforms

into an enchanted world

of the imaginary

where time and space

lose their meaning.

These crystal formations take

thousands of years to grow.

The artists of the cave

never even saw them,

as many of them

only started to form

after the landslide

sealed the entrance.

In a forbidden recess

of the cave,

there's a footprint

of an eight-year-old boy

next to the footprint

of a wolf.

Did a hungry wolf

stalk the boy?

Or did they walk together

as friends?

Or were their tracks made

thousands of years apart?

We'll never know.

Dwarfed

by these large chambers

illuminated

by our wandering lights,

sometimes we were overcome by

a strange, irrational sensation

as if we were disturbing

the Paleolithic people

in their work.

It felt like eyes upon us.

This sensation occurred

to some of the scientists

and also the discoverers

of the cave.

It was a relief to surface

again aboveground.

Back outside,

we ask Jean-Michel Geneste

about hunting techniques

of Paleolithic people

millennia before the invention

of bow and arrow.

- The Ohauvet Oave

Aurignacian people

hunted a lot

of really big games.

They hunted everywhere

in France and Europe.

In the settlement,

we found a lot of bones

of reindeer, bison, horses,

and sometime mammoths.

So they developed very specific

hunting technology.

For example, the system

of the Aurignacian bone point

is very ingenious.

It's a bone point

on a wooden shaft.

The piece of the bone point

is very strongly associated

to the shaft.

It's a system using a fork

and a piece inside.

So it's very strong.

It has been made and developed

to kill bison or horses

like that.

It's very aggressive,

and it's also very strong

and powerful.

This kind of weapon and spear

were thrown

not only by hand, like that,

because it's not very efficient,

but l... - we suspect that very... -

in the beginning

of the Paleolithic,

they developed the technology

of the spear thrower.

A spear thrower, it's at

the beginning only a hook,

sometime a tooth,

a piece of antler,

like this one,

on a long handle.

It's elongated arm gave

a lot of power, like that,

and also at the same time,

some precision to keep... -

I just... - to give the spear

a good direction.

So I will show you.

Yes.

You see, the spear

with a flint point,

but to use this,

it's necessary to have

a small depression

at the back of the spear.

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