Question on La Mouthe Cave art

[AWSX]

Recently in a discussion on the Clovis/Solutrean possible connection a drawing of a boat with a sail in La Mouthe Cave in the Dordogne region of France was mentioned. In searching the web, I did find a couple of references to this but have not  found any reproduction of the drawing. Does anyone have any information on this cave (and possibly a picture of this drawing)?

The mention of this drawing traces back to an article by Michael Collins on the Gault Site published in the Mammoth Trumpet.   http://www.centerfirstamericans.org/mt.php?a=1

"Collins also conceded he has taken his time at getting around to looking at alternative theories for the peopling of the Americas. "I guess I'm just more willing to think outside the box than I once was." He recalled being skeptical when French archaeologist Abbé H. Breuil, who was working at La Mouthe Cave in the Dordogne in the southwest of France many years ago, noted that there is a depiction of a boat with a sail on the cave's wall. "I thought it was the craziest thing I ever heard," he said."

Allan Shumaker

[Daryl Habel]

Recently in a discussion on the Clovis/Solutrean possible connection a drawing of a boat with a sail in La Mouthe Cave in the Dordogne region of France was mentioned. In searching the web, I did find a couple of references to this but have not  found any reproduction of the drawing. Does anyone have any information on this cave (and possibly a picture of this drawing)?

The mention of this drawing traces back to an article by Michael Collins on the Gault Site published in the Mammoth Trumpet.   http://www.centerfirstamericans.org/mt.php?a=1

"Collins also conceded he has taken his time at getting around to looking at alternative theories for the peopling of the Americas. "I guess I'm just more willing to think outside the box than I once was." He recalled being skeptical when French archaeologist Abbé H. Breuil, who was working at La Mouthe Cave in the Dordogne in the southwest of France many years ago, noted that there is a depiction of a boat with a sail on the cave's wall. "I thought it was the craziest thing I ever heard," he said."

Allan Shumaker

Hi Allan,

Sorry I can't help with La Mouthe Cave, since I've made a brief look into what my books and notes say about sail-boating depictions, and I can find nothing that mentions Breuil and boat depictions at La Mouthe.  I did find the following from:

Greenman, E.F. (1963). The Upper Palaeolithic and the New World. Current Anthropology. 4 (1): 41-91.

Greenman says (1963: 48 direct quote) : "Boat-like shapes painted on the walls of Palaeolithic caves have been called by the noncommittal term "Naviform" (Breuil et al. 1915:23), and the only claim that there were boats in the Upper Palaeolithic is that of  Abbé Breuil (1952:205), based on the similarity of styles in the painting of animal figures in the lower Rhone basin, Sicily, and Morocco.  Castillo Cave, on the wall of which No. 151 is painted, is one of 4 caves where there are many boat-like paintings.  All are situated in the coastal areas of Spain:  Castillo, Altamira, and La Pasiega, near the Biscayan coast; and La Pileta in southeastern Spain near the coast of the Mediterranean Sea (Plates 7,8).  Many of them exhibit the longitudinal outlines of the birch bark canoe of northeastern North America.  Compare Nos. 165, 168....",etc.

I looked at the "boat-like forms" on Plates 7 and 8, and if you use some imagination the depictions could be interptered as "canoes", but none of them seem to have anything that appears to be a "sail", at least not to me.  No mention of sailboats at La Mouthe, but the Breuil reference is:

Breuil, (L'Abbé) Henri. 1952. Four hundred centuries of cave art. Translated by Mary E. Boyle. Centre d'etudes et de documentation prehistoriques.

I might have a pdf of the Greenman article, but I'll have to dig through my CD's.  If I can find it, I'll email attach it to you.   Maybe Paul will chime in with something - he's closer (geographically, anyways).

Best,
Dar 

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

Recently in a discussion on the Clovis/Solutrean possible connection a drawing of a boat with a sail in La Mouthe Cave in the Dordogne region of France was mentioned. In searching the web, I did find a couple of references to this but have not  found any reproduction of the drawing. Does anyone have any information on this cave (and possibly a picture of this drawing)?

The mention of this drawing traces back to an article by Michael Collins on the Gault Site published in the Mammoth Trumpet.   http://www.centerfirstamericans.org/mt.php?a=1

"Collins also conceded he has taken his time at getting around to looking at alternative theories for the peopling of the Americas. "I guess I'm just more willing to think outside the box than I once was." He recalled being skeptical when French archaeologist Abbé H. Breuil, who was working at La Mouthe Cave in the Dordogne in the southwest of France many years ago, noted that there is a depiction of a boat with a sail on the cave's wall. "I thought it was the craziest thing I ever heard," he said."

Allan Shumaker

Hi Allan,

Sorry I can't help with La Mouthe Cave, since I've made a brief look into what my books and notes say about sail-boating depictions, and I can find nothing that mentions Breuil and boat depictions at La Mouthe.  I did find the following from:

Greenman, E.F. (1963). The Upper Palaeolithic and the New World. Current Anthropology. 4 (1): 41-91.

Greenman says (1963: 48 direct quote) : "Boat-like shapes painted on the walls of Palaeolithic caves have been called by the noncommittal term "Naviform" (Breuil et al. 1915:23), and the only claim that there were boats in the Upper Palaeolithic is that of  Abbé Breuil (1952:205), based on the similarity of styles in the painting of animal figures in the lower Rhone basin, Sicily, and Morocco.  Castillo Cave, on the wall of which No. 151 is painted, is one of 4 caves where there are many boat-like paintings.  All are situated in the coastal areas of Spain:  Castillo, Altamira, and La Pasiega, near the Biscayan coast; and La Pileta in southeastern Spain near the coast of the Mediterranean Sea (Plates 7,8).  Many of them exhibit the longitudinal outlines of the birch bark canoe of northeastern North America.  Compare Nos. 165, 168....",etc.

I looked at the "boat-like forms" on Plates 7 and 8, and if you use some imagination the depictions could be interptered as "canoes", but none of them seem to have anything that appears to be a "sail", at least not to me.  No mention of sailboats at La Mouthe, but the Breuil reference is:

Breuil, (L'Abbé) Henri. 1952. Four hundred centuries of cave art. Translated by Mary E. Boyle. Centre d'etudes et de documentation prehistoriques.

I might have a pdf of the Greenman article, but I'll have to dig through my CD's.  If I can find it, I'll email attach it to you.   Maybe Paul will chime in with something - he's closer (geographically, anyways).

Best,
Dar 

Allan and Dar,

First, I should say that I essentially  agree with Dar’s succinct statement.

Second, if you haven’t found Greenman’s article. Let me know. I have a copy  (PDF) of it that I could send. By the way, this  article did surface and was discussed during the life of the old Palanth-l.

Third, I don’t know where Collins got his La Mouthe/boat information from. Having pretty much looked at all I have on French and Spanish parietal art (which is not negligible, by the way), I didn’t find obvious references (textual or visual) to what Collins was talking about. This said, I'll have to check out the Mammoth Trumpet article! Anyway, the vast majority of what has been found at La Mouthe consists of painted and/or engraved tracings representing the usual animals accompanied by a variety of other smaller signs that are essentially uninterpretable. The only exception is found on a wall of a chamber called “Salle de la Hutte”. The main panel – apparently a mix of both engraving and black and white painting techniques – is called “Le panneau de la Hutte” and has been interpreted as representing a “hut”. I have taken the liberty  of uploading two quickly scanned images of this feature (from Breuil’s 1952 opus). They can be accessed HERE, and HERE.

Given time, I’ll have more to say later about what I take to be a superb exercise in misinformed wishful thinking on the part of Collins and others, i.e., the supporters of a “Solutrean solution or connection” that could explain some recent pre-Clovis claims. In this regard, and in the meantime, you should have a look at:

Guy Straus, Lawrence, David J. Meltzer and Ted Goebel. 2005. Ice Age Atlantis? Exploring the Solutrean-Clovis ‘connection’, World Archaeology 37(4): 507 – 532..

The paper is quite informative and has a very good list of references.

By the way, I also have a copy of it!

Jacques

[trehinp]

 Maybe Paul will chime in with something - he's closer (geographically, anyways).

Best,
Dar 

I'll have a try at it when I'll be back home, as the subject is quite interesting. I was not aware of boats representations in the Palaeolithic art. As far as I can remember, the first boat representations only appeared during the Neolitic period.

So it is quite intriguing to think that there may have been such representation during the Palaeolithic. If verified, that would be of the greatest importance with regard to the understanding of the evolution of prehistoric art.

Paul

[trehinp]

Dear Allan, Dar and Jacques,

I've done several internet researches all afternoon without success. The only posible references to some representations that are not animal based point to the same "Hutte" drawing that Jacques gave us, which I don't think L'Abbé Breuil would have confused with a sail boat.

I just sent an e-mail to Brigitte and Gilles Delluc who are well known authorities in matter of palaetlothic art, in particular in France. They studied "La Mouthe" Cave in detail in 1971 and published several papers on the subject? May be Jacques has access to these papers:

 La grotte de la Mouthe (Les Eyzies). Une étude de l'abbé Breuil : la découverte et l'archéologie / Brigitte Delluc, Gilles Delluc, Denis Vialou. In Bulletin de la Société Historique et Archéologique du Périgord, 1995. - p. 523-536.

La grotte de la Mouthe (Les Eyzies). Une étude de l'abbé Breuil (suite et fin) : la décoration pariétale / Brigitte Delluc, Gilles Delluc, Denis Vialou. In Bulletin de la Société Historique et Archéologique du Périgord, 1995. - p. 645-668.

I'll let you know as soon as they will have answered my e-mail.

Yours sincerely.

Paul

[trehinp]

Fabulous... Brigitte and Gilles Delluc have already answered my e-mail. I just sent it at 6:30 PM tonight and had a reply in my mail at 8 PM... Sorry for the delay in my own transmission :-)

As expected they confirmed that they have a deep knowledge of "La Mouthe" Cave art.  They have published several other papers which are listed at the bottom of this post

There is no boat representation in that cave. It is the "tectiforme" sign, called "la hutte" which was at the origin of this "adventurous" interpretation (that's their own words)

They add in their answer that they know of no boat representation in the Palaeolithic art.

This of course doesn't mean that palaeolithic people didn't use them. They mention "Magdalenians of the Rhine region did cross the Rhine river, which was pretty wide, between Andernach and Gönnersdorf. This couldn't be done without flotting devices.

"Finaly", they add, "one must remember that Australia has been populated around 50K years BP. It was then separated from the Asian Continent by a straight of about 100 km and they needed, indeed, boats or rafts, on which men and women could navigate to reach it."
"We don't know anything more and nothing was left..."

I hope this will be useful for the discussion. At least, the part concerning "La Mouthe" cave art is now clear.

Paul

Articles on the subject:
+ 1973 : Quelques figurations paléolithiques inédites des environs des Eyzies (Dordogne) : grottes Archambeau, du Roc et de La Mouthe, Gallia-Préhistoire, 16, 1, p. 201-209, 9 fig.

+ 1986 : Note à propos de La Mouthe, in : Informations archéologiques d'Aquitaine, Gallia-Préhistoire, 29, n° 2, p. 233-258

+ 1995 : La grotte de La Mouthe (Les Eyzies). Une étude de l'abbé Breuil. La découverte et l'archéologie, Bull. de la Soc. hist. et arch. du Périgord, 122, p. 523-536, 4 pl.

+ 1995 : La grotte de La Mouthe (Les Eyzies). Une étude de l'abbé Breuil (suite et fin). La décoration pariétale, Bull. de la Soc. hist. et arch. du Périgord, 122, p. 645-668, 4 fig.

+ 1991 : L'Art pariétal archaïque en Aquitaine, XXVIII e suppl. à Gallia-Préhistoire, Ed. du C.N.R.S., 393 p., 235 fig., V tabl. et 1 rabat dépliant

[AWSX]

Thanks Paul and everyone else,
Apparently Collins was mistaken on which cave the alleged boat drawing was in.

In the Greenman paper I can see some drawings that  could be canoes but only one had what might be a mast and no sails. 

This does not surprise me because if there was an undisputed drawing of a sail boat,  Stanford and Bradley would have publicised it in support for their Solutrean/Clovis hypothesis.

Allan Shumaker

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

Fabulous... Brigitte and Gilles Delluc have already answered my e-mail. I just sent it at 6:30 PM tonight and had a reply in my mail at 8 PM... Sorry for the delay in my own transmission :-)

As expected they confirmed that they have a deep knowledge of "La Mouthe" Cave art.  They have published several other papers which are listed at the bottom of this post

There is no boat representation in that cave. It is the "tectiforme" sign, called "la hutte" which was at the origin of this "adventurous" interpretation (that's their own words)

They add in their answer that they know of no boat representation in the Palaeolithic art.

This of course doesn't mean that palaeolithic people didn't use them. They mention "Magdalenians of the Rhine region did cross the Rhine river, which was pretty wide, between Andernach and Gönnersdorf. This couldn't be done without flotting devices.

"Finaly", they add, "one must remember that Australia has been populated around 50K years BP. It was then separated from the Asian Continent by a straight of about 100 km and they needed, indeed, boats or rafts, on which men and women could navigate to reach it."
"We don't know anything more and nothing was left..."

I hope this will be useful for the discussion. At least, the part concerning "La Mouthe" cave art is now clear.

Paul

Dear Paul,

Thanks to you and the Dellucs for confirming my initial statement regarding the La Mouthe purported "boat". A further look at what I have on the parietal art from other LUP cave sites located along the Franco-Cantabrian seaboard, has yielded no evidence whatsoever of paintings and/or engravings that can be seriously interpreted as representations of “boats” with or without sails! As for whether or not the UP people had the means to move across relatively narrow bodies of water (streams/rivers, oceanic straits, etc.), one only has to look at the (palaeo)geography of the continental and subcontinental regions that were occupied/colonized at that time, and think ... like the Dellucs!

Cordialement,

Jacques