Gargas caves

Caves of Gargas
Interior view taken by Félix Régnault before 1910
Location	Aventignan, Hautes-Pyrénées
Coordinates	43°03′19″N 00°32′10″E / 43.05528°N 0.53611°E / 43.05528; 0.53611

The Caves of Gargas (French: Grottes de Gargas) in the Pyrenees region of France are known for their cave art from the Upper Paleolithic period - about 27,000 years old.

The caves are open to the public.

The caves are located near the town of Aventignan in the Hautes-Pyrénées department in south-western France, at the edge of the Haute-Garonne close to Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges.

The caves have yielded evidence of occupation (bones, lithics (stone tools) and portable art) from the Mousterian to the Middle Ages, but it is most famous for its paintings and engravings of the Upper Paleolithic.

The paintings have numerous negative hand stencils made by the stencil technique. The hands are red (ochre) or black (manganese oxide), using a mixture of iron oxide and manganese crushed with animal fat, and sprayed around the hand against the wall. Some have one or more fingers absent which leads to hypotheses of diseases, frostbite and ritual amputation, but most researchers prefer the symbolism of bending one or more fingers.

Many figurative engravings are also present in other parts of the caves, depicting horses, bison, aurochs, ibex and mammoth. Carbon-14 dating of a bone stuck in a crack in a wall decorated with hand stencils revealed close to 27,000 years BP, indicating that the cave was frequented in the Gravettian period. It is surmised that the Hands paintings probably date from this period.