Trois Frères

Trois Frères, cave in Ariège, France, containing an important group of Late Paleolithic paintings and engravings.

The cave was discovered in 1914, and most of the pictures of animals, together with a couple of therianthropes (half-human, half-animal figures), are located on the walls of a deep interior chamber known as the Sanctuary. This area is filled with some 280 often-overlapping engraved figures of bison, horses, stags, reindeer, ibex, and mammoths. The great majority probably date to the mid-Magdalenian Period (about 14,000 years ago). The Sanctuary is dominated by the cave’s most famous figure, a small image, both painted and engraved, known as the Horned God, or the Sorcerer. It depicts a human with the features of several different animals, and it dominates the mass of animal figures from a height of 13 feet (4 meters) above the cave floor. Its significance is unknown, but it is usually interpreted as some kind of great spirit or master of the animals. The unusual nature of the Sanctuary’s decoration may reflect the practice of magical ceremonies in the chamber.

In a different part of the cave, there is a small chamber, known as the Chapel of the Lioness, that contains a large engraving of a lioness on a natural “altar,” with numerous special objects (animal teeth, shells, flint tools) carefully placed in crevices below it and around the walls. These are most plausibly seen as votive objects.