Are The Baffling La Marche Cave Paintings Authentic Or Cunning Forgeries?

Ellen Lloyd - AncientPages.com - Every now and then we come across strange and controversial archaeological discoveries that are naturally of great interest to all truth-seekers. In most cases, investigating the unusual findings can be difficult because sometimes ancient objects are “lost” or misplaced.

When it comes to cave paintings, we don’t face this problem because these engravings cannot be easily “removed” out of sight. This brings us to today’s subject dealing with very unusual cave paintings in France.

Few places in Europe have caused as much controversy as the strange La Marche cave. Scientists continue to argue over the unorthodox cave paintings that challenge our knowledge of ancient history. Are the extraordinary cave paintings authentic or cunning forgeries?

Are The Controversial La Marche Cave Paintings Authentic Or Cunning Forgeries?

Faces carved on the floor of a cave at La Marche. 

Frankly, in this case, we are forced to say, these baffling cave paintings seem almost too good to be true. Did someone commit a horrible archaeological crime by deliberately creating these paintings? if so, then for what reason?

La Marche is a cave located near the village of Lussac-les-Châteaux, Vienne in the in western France. The cave is one of the most important archaeological sites for stone carvings from the Magdalenian period 17,000 - 12,000 years ago.

Between 1937 and 1940, Léon Péricard and Stéphane Lwoff discovered the cave complex with approximately 1,500 limestone stones with carvings depicting bears, lions, antelopes, and horses, as well as 155 curiously realistic human figures.

The humans depicted on the walls of the cave are puzzling. They are very different from other Paleolithic drawings and resemble caricatures of real people, old men, children, men whose faces are shaved, and women (often obese) sometimes dressed in coats, and with hats and boots. Several of them have ornaments on their bodies that can be interpreted as painting or perhaps tattoos.

The interpretations of these remarkable carvings are controversial, still disputed, and considered a forgery by many scientists because the ‘real’ people in La Marche Cave resemble modern art.

The carvings are also difficult to interpret because sometimes one image overlaps with another or several of them.

The depictions date back to about 15,000 - 13,000BC and we know that at the time, Europe was largely under the weight of glaciers. It was before great civilizations appeared.

If the paintings are authentic, one must question the existence of primitive man as we know it. However, it’s hard to imagine the drawings are real because nothing similar has been found elsewhere in Europe.

Are The Controversial La Marche Cave Paintings Authentic Or Cunning Forgeries?

The La Marche cave paintings are intriguing, but are they authentic? 

The Lascaux cave, located on a hill at Dordogne, near Montignac, in southern France, is famous for its outstanding Magdalenian paintings, but the images we come across there certainly do not resemble anything we find in the La Marche cave.

Ancient Pages explained previously, the “brilliant prehistoric paintings of Lascaux, with their anatomically perfect details of all depicted animals, are rendered with great art skills like shadowing, highlighting, stenciling, and the use of perspective, a technique that was not rediscovered until the Golden Age in Greece.

Lascaux cave paintings

Lascaux cave paintings depicting animals. Credit: Public Domain

However, looking at the millennia-old Paleolithic artwork of Lascaux, where only simple stick figures represent a man, we cannot tell if the artists were a Neanderthal man or Cro-Magnon man or perhaps someone else.”

Compared to the Lascaux cave paintings the carved etchings at La Marche appear crude and far too modern.

It’s also worth noticing people depicted on the walls at La Marche are dressed in rather modern clothes. This may perhaps not be so surprising considering the fact ancient figurines of men and women wearing modern-day clothes have been previously encountered in Europe.

Ancient Vinca Culture

The Vinca figurines. 

“The Vinca legacy includes among others, curious masks and the most informative costumed figurines depicting women in extremely modern clothes like narrow skirts, and sleeveless upper-body panels, complimented with hip belts, aprons, jewelry, shoes, caps, hairstyles, bracelets, necklaces, and medallions.”

Are The Controversial La Marche Cave Paintings Authentic Or Cunning Forgeries?

Is this an authentic carving of a woman who lived during the Magdalenian period?

However, the Vinca culture in southeastern Europe, in present-day Serbia, and smaller parts of Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Romania, flourished from about 6000 BC to 3000 B.C. and though the Vinca's living style reminds us of our own it cannot be compared to the engravings found inside the La Marche cave.

There are some scientists who think the La Marche cave paintings are authentic, but there are also many experts who doubt the engravings were produced during the Magdalenian period.

When it comes to the La Marche cave paintings, the verdict is still out there.

Written by Ellen Lloyd – AncientPages.com

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