# clueless visitors to Lascaux cave replica **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 16, 2002, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clueless-visitors-to-lascaux-cave-replica/124232 "2002-08-16T18:47:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2002, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clueless-visitors-to-lascaux-cave-replica/124232/1 "2002-08-16T18:47:03Z")
> **[Life In Deepest France: Oh! These tourists](https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2002/08/13/Life-In-Deepest-France-Oh-These-tourists/17061029256960/)** > > "Don't know why I bothered to come, really, this place seems to get along just fine without me!" quipped one American tourist down in this neck of the woods on > [@](#): > > “But we had no idea prehistoric men used such modern-looking scaffolding – and as for those electric cables …!” > > Sometimes the requests are harder to satisfy. How much does the bull in the big painting weigh? Did they paint the animals from memory, or did they bring the animals into the caves – and if so, how did they get them to stay still? LOL! ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2002, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clueless-visitors-to-lascaux-cave-replica/124232/2 "2002-08-16T18:53:49Z")
There are some folks that are losing the human race. ---
**Author:** ![Eats\_Crayons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/278dde/32.png) [@Eats\_Crayons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eats_Crayons)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2002, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clueless-visitors-to-lascaux-cave-replica/124232/3 "2002-08-16T21:05:38Z")
An acquaintance of mine worked (under-the-table) in a genuine castle in Europe (for the life of me I can’t remember where! This is someone who travelled through central Europe and the UK). The fortress was up on the hill while the sprawling town was in the valley below. Pretty typical urban planning of the era, really. A disgruntled tourist once trudged in, indignantly complaining “Why did they build the castle so far away from the shopping malls? That wasn’t well thought out _at all!_” I’ve also seen American tourists defacing the prehistoric walls of Anasazi Native American ruins. Some German tourists at the site were mortified and I overheard one saying “it’s like they are desecrating a grave!” Apparently, the adults who were carving their names (until a ranger flipped out on them) thought it was a construction à la Disneyland. They couldn’t understand the big deal since it was all clay and stone that could be rebuilt so easily. Tourists can be very weird. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2002, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clueless-visitors-to-lascaux-cave-replica/124232/4 "2002-08-16T21:33:37Z")
> [@](#): > > “But what about Newton’s theory of human evolution?” Isn’t that the one that says “an animal evolving will continue to evolve…”? 😉 (In this case, apparently not! 😃 ) ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2002, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clueless-visitors-to-lascaux-cave-replica/124232/5 "2002-08-17T02:34:16Z")
And why on earth did they paint those beasties underground? If they had any sense, those cavemen would have hung their pics in an art gallery like a [normal](http://www.btinternet.com/~charles.nightingale/chimpanzee_painting.htm) homonid ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2002, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clueless-visitors-to-lascaux-cave-replica/124232/6 "2002-08-17T13:34:42Z")
> [@](#): > > And why on earth did they paint those beasties underground? From [_Not the Bible_](http://church.freethought.org/9701.creation.html): > [@](#): > > 1. In the beginning God created Dates. > > 2. And the date was Monday, July 4, 4004 BC. > > 3. And God said, let there be light; and there was light. And when there was Light, God saw the Date, that it was Monday, and he got down to work; for verily, he had a Big Job to do. > > 4. And God made pottery shards and Silurian mollusks and pre-Cambrian limestone strata; and flints and Jurassic Mastodon tusks and Picanthopus erectus skulls and Cretaceous placentals made he; **and those cave paintings at Lasceaux**. And that was that, for the first Work Day… > > 5. **And God buried all the Things which he had made** , and that was that. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2002, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clueless-visitors-to-lascaux-cave-replica/124232/7 "2002-08-17T13:40:52Z")
[Here’s another site for _Not the Bible_](http://notthebible.8m.com/b1.htm). ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2002, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clueless-visitors-to-lascaux-cave-replica/124232/8 "2002-08-17T13:53:04Z")
I was in Lascaux II a few years ago, and this American lady asked the French guide: “Do you feel that the depictions of ritual indicate any ontological symbolism that might suggest the presence of what one might even consider to be a Jungian collective unconscious, or is the dynamic indicated here merely representational of a contemporaneous cultural hegemony?” To which he replied “Hunh?” ---
**Author:** ![Mooney252](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7c8e57/32.png) [@Mooney252](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mooney252)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2002, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clueless-visitors-to-lascaux-cave-replica/124232/9 "2002-08-17T15:17:13Z")
> [@](#): > > One man, obviously an expert, asked: “The paintings are all very fine. But surely we also have documentary evidence as to why they painted them in the first place?” – while another wondered, “But what about Newton’s theory of human evolution?” That theory of Newton’s is re-explained as: “The fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.”