France’s Prehistoric Art and the Cave You Can Never Leave
Niaux Cave is the home we all secretly know
We never really left the cave
But it was never home. It was more than that.
Sociologists and business weasels talk about the Third Place that people need to thrive. Not work, and not home. It’s what Starbucks is trying to be, what the local pub always was, what the gym or the library or the park or the theater can be. What the church used to be.
The cave is more than that, too.
Maybe you could call this cave and others like it the First Place. The first place where our species left evidence of what we really are, the part of us that makes us the strange, infuriating, glorious species we are.
Our inner life that transforms the outer one, splashed first on these cave walls fourteen thousand years ago, leaving a direct line from here to the painted stars.
Part of me is still in there now.
Part of you, too.
We didn’t have a car back then
She and I were on a grand high adventure, an impulsive long-term trip to Europe from our Canadian home that ended up defining the rest of our lives.
