Coming to the end of the year brings us closer to each other, closer to our families, to our neighbours, to our community and to our traditions. The need to gather goes back to the time when nature was ruling the life of the people in a far more rigorous way than it does today and obliged them to live together to survive.

Last summer I went with my wife and our two sons to the South of France, to the Pyrenees and the Dordogne Area. I have been living in the Pyrenees for a while, when I was working as a salesman for an organic fertiliser company. But then I didn't take the time to look around for caves and prehistoric sites. The caves of Ariege and Dordogne have been occupied by different groups of hunters during a long period, from 40000 to 12000 BC.

These hunters were travelling the plains during the summer, hunting in small groups, generally clans. From the early days the hunt was for mammoth and reindeer, which were travelling in herds. After the ice age, around 20000 BC the hunt was for smaller animals, mainly deer. The hunters had to defend themselves against the other predators, like bears and felines. In the winter the group of hunters and their families were moving back to the mountain area, where natural caves had been carved in the limestone by underground rivers earlier on. During these long and cold winters they kept hunting deer, boars and mountain goats to supplement the reserves accumulated during the summer.

Generally we picture our hunter ancestors as primitive people with their skin clothes, spears and natural instincts. But our visit to their winter quarters has changed my ideas about this. We discovered their artistic abilities of parietal paintings (on walls). As a farmer I love my animals. Their individuality manifests itself through the variety of forms, shapes and colours of their robes. I love to see pictures of them too, but what I saw in these caves was far more moving.

First we had to travel underground, sometimes for half a mile, like at Niaux. It's already an experience to go in deep caves, with children, at the light of a torch, through ups and downs, narrow passages, even if today it is made easier for the public. We travelled through a world of stalactites and forms made by nature's fantasy (an elephant, a tortoise, a witch) to enter some huge spaces, as big as a cathedral, and go deeper and farther into the womb of the earth. Suddenly the guide called for a stop and, with his torch, pointed to the wall and showed the paintings. They are awfully beautiful – these buffalo bulls, red, black, spotty, by dozens, the cows, the deer jumping, the horses trotting: a zoo of familiar faces, longhorns, well designed noses, ears, mouths, hooves, tails, tusks of mammoth for the oldest, felines and bears. Impressive beauty and finesse of the details – you would think it was done last week by a realistic painter. For example we visited in Lascaux the equivalent of the Sistine Chapel, with its four hundred or so animals covering walls and ceilings. They are painted with charcoal, fat, red powdered stone, sticks and brushes, at the light of animal fat burning in a dug out stone lamp. And these painters were our primitive ancestors.

Like lots of things of the past, their true meaning is lost. It could have been hunting ceremonials, religious believes and expressions, but whatever, it is left to us as a testimony of their lives. But to me, as a farmer, it left me with a feeling of joy and pride, to be part of this endless generation of people who make a living from animals and find beauty in a horny cow or a trotting pony. As I watch my little fellow drawing and colouring reindeer and cows, I am amazed how things travel through time.

Best Wishes,
Jean-Yves