Paleolithic handywork: Discovered in 1940, France's Lascaux Cave has some of the world's most spectacular prehistoric cave art.
PARIS: The problem of black fungus threatening world-famous prehistoric paintings at the Lascaux Cave in southwestern France is stable, a scientist said last week.
France, criticised for its management of Lascaux, applied fungicide to the cave's walls in January 2008 in a bid to roll back patches of mould imperilling the legendary art.
Dubbed "the Sistine Chapel of prehistory," Lascaux, listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, includes stunning pictures of horses, extinct bulls and ibexes, painted by unknown hands some 17,000 years ago.
Sick cave syndrome
The cave was rediscovered by four teenagers in 1940 and became a massive draw to tourists in the 1950s and 1960s. It has been closed to the public since 1963 to prevent deterioration of the art caused by humidity and warmth from visitors.
A visitors' centre has been built outside the cave, with replicas of the painted chambers, and receives around 300,000 tourists each year.
The mould problems emerged in 2001, when a white fungus, Fusarium solani, broke out, apparently infiltrating the cave through new air-conditioning or work to install the system.
The outbreak was tackled aggressively, including the use of fungicides and antibiotic compresses applied to the painted walls to kill mould and bacteria. Thereafter, black spots of ulocladium fungus broke out.
Marc Gauthier, head of the cave's scientific committee, told journalists on the sidelines of a special Lascaux seminar on Friday, that the situation is stable and "the cave has not undergone any sharp change" since the operation to apply fungicide last year.
"Fiendishly complex microscopic flora"
"The black spots are not shrinking, nor they progressing… the cave is sick and is currently resting," said Gauthier. "We want the patient to recover and restore its natural balance by itself."
Last week's two-day Paris seminar included specialists in cave art from South Africa, Spain, the Czech Republic, the United States and Japan, who had been invited to swap ideas and experiences.
The microscopic flora in Lascaux "is fiendishly complex," said the seminar's chairman, Jean Clottes. "A hundred micro-organisms or more are cohabiting and interacting there. All it needs is for one to dominate for disaster to ensue."
France's handling of Lascaux has been attacked by a vocal group of conservationists, who faulted the installation of the air-conditioning system in 2001 as catastrophic, and who say the management structure is bureaucratic and unaccountable.
Mack
Thanks for sharing this post. The complex painted caves of Lascaux are located in the Dordogne region. The awe-inspiring paintings are also described as ‘the antediluvian Sistine Chapel’.1200 visitors daily visit the cave. The initial climatic situation had been re-build and maintained with the assistance of a fully-automated system. The original caves were made in 1980 called as Lascaux II. The Great Hall of the Bulls with its vast-spanning murals comprises of animals like horses, stags and bulls. you can find beautiful art form based on the conventional ancient animal premise inclusive of bison, stag, ibexes. For more details refer Caves Of Lascaux
The Mould Problem
I am surprised that to date the international mould specialists "Mould Busters" have not been consulted on this issue. Their techniques are so advanced and non-invasive that they have been used in Museums. Better to try to address the problem than face the risk of losing precious, historical art!