To succeed in the one place on the earth the place cave work of prehistoric marine life have been discovered, archaeologists should dive to the underside of the Mediterranean off southern France.
Then they've to barter a 137-yard pure tunnel into the rock, passing via the mouth of the cave till they emerge into an enormous cavern, a lot of it now submerged.
Three males died making an attempt to find this "underwater Lascaux" as rumors unfold of a cave to match the one in southwestern France that utterly modified the best way we see our Stone Age ancestors.
Lascaux — which Picasso visited in 1940 — proved the urge to make artwork is as previous as humanity itself.
Archaeologist Luc Vanrell's life modified the second he surfaced contained in the Cosquer cavern and noticed its staggering photos. Even now, 30 years on, he remembers the "aesthetic shock."
However the cave and its treasures, some courting again greater than 30,000 years, are in grave hazard. Local weather change and water and plastic air pollution are threatening to scrub away the artwork prehistoric women and men created over 15 millennia.
Since a sudden near-five-inch rise within the sea stage there in 2011, Vanrell and his colleagues have been in a race in opposition to time to file every little thing they'll.
Yearly the excessive water mark rises a number of extra millimeters, consuming away a little bit extra of the traditional work and carvings.
"Indispensable for researchers"
Vanrell and the diver-archaeologists he leads are having to work quicker and quicker to discover the final corners of the 27,000 sq. foot grotto to protect a hint of its neolithic wonders earlier than they're misplaced.
An nearly life-sized recreation of the Cosquer cavern will open this week a number of miles away in Marseille.
AFP joined the dive group earlier this 12 months as they raced to complete the digital mapping for a 3D reconstruction of the cave.
Round 600 indicators, photos and carvings — a few of aquatic life by no means earlier than seen in cave work — have been discovered on the partitions of the immense cave 37 meters beneath the azure waters of the breathtaking Calanques inlets east of Marseille.
"We fantasized about bringing the cave to the floor," mentioned diver Bertrand Chazaly, who's answerable for the operation to digitalize the cave.
"When it's completed, our digital Cosquer cavern — which is correct to inside millimeters — shall be indispensable for researchers and archaeologists who will be unable to bodily get inside."
The cave was some "10 kilometers from the coast" when it was in use, archaeologist Michel Olive instructed AFP. "On the time we had been in the course of an ice age and the ocean was 135 meters decrease" than it's at present.
From the dive boat, Olive, who's answerable for finding out the cave, attracts along with his finger an unlimited plain the place the Mediterranean now's. "The doorway to the cave was on a little bit promontory dealing with south over grassland protected by cliffs. It was a particularly good place for prehistoric man," he mentioned.
The partitions of the cave present the coastal plain was teeming with wildlife — horses, deer, bison, ibex, prehistoric auroch cows, saiga antelopes but in addition seals, penguins, fish and a cat and a bear.
The 229 figures depicted on the partitions cowl 13 completely different species.
However neolithic women and men additionally left a mark of themselves on the partitions, with 69 pink or black hand prints in addition to three left by mistake, together with by youngsters.
And that doesn't depend the a whole lot of geometric indicators and the eight sexual depictions of female and male physique components.
What additionally stands out concerning the cave is the size of time it was occupied, mentioned Vanrell, "from 33,000 to 18,500 years in the past".
The sheer density of its graphics places "Cosquer among the many 4 largest cave artwork websites on the earth alongside Lascaux, Altamira in Spain and Chauvet," which can also be in southern France.
"And since the cave partitions which can be at present underwater had been in all probability additionally as soon as adorned, nothing else in Europe compares to its measurement," he added.
Exploring Cosquer can also be "addictive", the 62-year-old insisted, with a twinkle in his eye. "Some individuals who have been engaged on the location get depressed in the event that they have not been down shortly. They miss their favourite bison," he smiled.
For Vanrell, diving down is sort of a "journey into oneself". The spirit "of the place seeps into you."
"I got here throughout a hand print"
Henri Cosquer, an expert deep sea diver operating a diving college, mentioned he discovered the cave by probability in 1985, simply 15 meters off the naked limestone cliffs.
Little by little he dared to enterprise additional and additional into 137-metre-long breach within the cliff till sooner or later he got here out via a cavity lower out by the ocean.
"I got here up in a pitch-dark cave. You might be soaking, you come out of the mud and also you slide round... It took me a number of journeys to go proper round it," he instructed AFP.
"At first, I noticed nothing with my lamp after which I got here throughout a hand print," the diver mentioned.
Whereas the legislation dictates that such discoveries should be declared instantly to the authorities to allow them to be preserved, Cosquer saved the information to himself and some shut buddies.
"No person owned the cave. While you discover a great spot for mushrooms, you do not inform everybody about it, do you?" he mentioned.
However rumors of this aquatic Lascaux drew different divers and three died within the tunnel resulting in the cave. Marked by the tragedies, Cosquer owned as much as his discovery in 1991. The cave which bears his title is now sealed off by a railing. Solely scientific groups are allowed inside.
Dozens of archeological analysis missions have been carried out since to review and protect the location and make a list of the work and carvings. However sources started to empty away when Chauvet, which is far simpler to entry, was found within the Ardeche area in 1994.
"It was a disaster"
Solely in 2011 did issues start to alter when Olive and Vanrell raised the alarm after the fast rise within the sea stage led to irreparable harm to some photos.
"It was a disaster, and it actually shook us psychologically," Vanrell recalled, notably the large harm to the horse drawings.
"All the info reveals that the ocean stage is rising quicker and quicker," mentioned geologist Stephanie Touron, a specialist in prehistoric painted caves at France's historic monuments analysis laboratory.
"The ocean rises and falls within the cavity with variations in local weather, washing the partitions and leeching out soil and supplies which can be wealthy in data," she mentioned.
Microplastic air pollution is making the harm to the work even worse.
Within the face of such an existential menace, the French authorities has launched a significant push to file every little thing concerning the cavern, with archaeologist Cyril Montoya tasked with making an attempt to raised perceive the prehistoric communities who used it.
One of many mysteries he and his group will attempt to clear up would be the hint of fabric on the cave wall, which could verify a principle that hunter gatherers had been making garments on the time when the cave was occupied.
Pictures of the horses with lengthy manes additionally raises one other main query. Vanrell suspects this may point out that they could have been already domesticated, at the least partly, since wild horses have shorter manes, shorn down by galloping via bushes and vegetation. A drawing of what could be a harness could again up his principle.
Areas preserved below a layer of translucent calcite additionally present the "stays of coal", Montoya believes, which may have been used for portray or for heating or lighting. They could even have burned the coal on high of stalagmites, turning them into "lamps to mild the cavern".
However the central query of what the cave was used for stays an enigma, Olive admitted.
Whereas archaeologists agree that individuals didn't reside there, Olive mentioned some imagine it was a "sanctuary, or a gathering place, or someplace they mined moon milk, the white substance on (limestone) cave partitions that was used for physique paint and for the background for work and carving."
The thought of constructing a reproduction of the location was first mooted quickly after the cave was found. But it surely wasn't till 2016 that the regional authorities determined that it could be in a renovated fashionable constructing in Marseille subsequent to Mucem, the museum of European and Mediterranean civilizations on the mouth of the town's Outdated Port.
Utilizing the 3D information gathered by the archaeological groups, the 23-million-euro ($24-million) reproduction is barely smaller than the unique cave however contains copies of all of the work and 90 % of the carvings, mentioned Laurent Delbos from Klebert Rossillon, the corporate which copied the Chauvet collapse 2015.
Artist Gilles Tosello is among the craftspeople who has been copying the work utilizing the identical charcoal and instruments that his Stone Age forerunners used.
"The prehistoric artists wrote the rating way back and now I'm taking part in it," he mentioned sitting at nighttime in his studio, a element of a horse lit up earlier than him on the recreated cave wall.
Clearly moved, he hailed the nice mastery and "spontaneity" of his prehistoric predecessors, whose assured brush strokes clearly got here from "nice data and expertise. That liberty of gesture and sureness by no means ceases to amaze me," he mentioned.