Janeen Renaghan A man crawls into the recesses of a dark subterranean tunnel, his bare feet and deerskin sheath dragging on the rock. In his hand, a stone lamp filled with fat and lit by a wick of moss guides him deeper into the cavern, under piercing stalactites, over the bones of bears. Held to the rock wall, the flickering light from the lamp animates a Paleolithic animal kingdom.
Bulls stampede in a brown blur of hoofs and swinging tails.
Black horses canter. A red cave bear lumbers. A woolly rhinoceros stands, stiff and immobile in its unshorn coat. On his bone palette, the man combines a chunk of red ocher with animal fat. He dips a reed into the mixture and applies it to the rough, natural canvas, each stroke comprising some of the earliest known evidence of human existence.