1 The art of darkness
A spectacular gorge has revealed some of Britain's earliest known artworks
Paul Bahn was a man with a hunch. And in April 2003, the 49-year-old archaeologist decided to act upon it – with spectacular results. Bahn had long been puzzled by the absence of Palaeolithic engravings and paintings across Britain. Such works of art from this period of prehistory (which stretched from 3.3 million to around 11,650 years ago) had been found in nearby parts of Europe. Yet Britain remained a cave art black hole.
That bugged Bahn. He suspected that such art did indeed exist – if only we'd look in the right place. And so, with two colleagues, he set out to explore potential sites in central and southern England systematically. It didn't take long for his suspicion to be proved right.
The first site Bahn's team visited was Creswell Crags, a limestone gorge on the border of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. Ever since the 1870s, when Victorian explorers began excavating the caves – leaving spoil heaps that were later found to include stone tools and the bones of extinct animals such as the woolly rhino – the area had been known as a Palaeolithic site.
On that first morning, shining their torches on the walls of a 75-metre-long cave known as Church Hole, the team made out an engraving of a stag and two other carvings that hundreds of earlier visitors had failed to spot. Returning a few months later, aided by scaffolding, they found a further nine engravings. The next year, assisted by sunny weather that cast natural light into the cave, they found even more. Bahn's
