54 | NewScientist | 12 March 2011

CULTURELAB

Forgotten imagesCapturing the world’s oldest cave paintings in three dimensions is a stroke of genius

Caves of Forgotten Dreams, a 3D documentary to be released in the first half of 2011 by Werner Herzog

Reviewed by David Robson

IN 1994, Jean-Marie Chauvet and two friends felt a draft of air coming from a small opening in the side of a cliff in the French countryside. Easing themselves through a narrow shaft, they came into a labyrinth of chambers.

It must have felt like a step back in time. The skulls of cave lions and cave bears, long since extinct, littered the floors; within a glistening crust of calcite crystals, they could even make out the footprints of a prehistoric boy shadowed by a wolf. But it is the vivid depictions of galloping horses, tussling rhinos and courting lions stretching across the cave’s vast walls that must have left the explorers breathless.

Werner Herzog, famed as much for his early horror films as his Oscar-nominated documentaries, is the first director given access

to these treasures – at between 25,000 and 35,000 years old they are the oldest cave paintings in the world. His decision to film the Chauvet cave in 3D was a stroke of genius. The artists often distorted proportions to suit the curves of their cavernous canvases, meaning that in 2D their work can look somewhat wonky.

The painters were artists of great talent. They were adept at creating dynamic compositions and many of their pieces create a sense of movement by superimposing multiple images of creatures mid-action. In this way, a galloping rhino seems to leap across the cave wall in the flickering light of Herzog’s torch.

Often, the works seem to transcend time. One painting of a horse, for example, is made of overlapping figures painted by artists working 5000 years apart. “We are locked in history; they were not,” says the film’s narrator. And in the deepest cavern, there is a depiction of a horned bison

Quantum queries101 Quantum Questions by Kenneth W. Ford, Harvard University Press, $24.95/£18.95

Reviewed by Amanda Gefter

HOW big is an atom? What is nuclear fission? How does a laser work? If you have ever found yourself asking such questions, you are

in luck – physicist Kenneth Ford’s question-and-answer-style guide to the weirdness of the quantum realm is a clear and handy reference book.

Ford’s easy-going prose will help you feel right at home at

nature’s tiniest and most counter-intuitive scale. The brevity of each answer prevents Ford from going into much depth, but each tidbit is enough to whet any quantum tourist’s appetite.

Given the paradoxical ways of quantum physics, perhaps it is only fitting that the most intriguing question of all is the one that remains unanswered: How come the quantum?

The phrasing is borrowed from Ford’s mentor, John Wheeler, who felt there was some deeper theory that would explain all the oddities of the quantum world. We are still waiting, but in the meantime Ford manages to explain a lot.

Future imperfectFuture Babble by Dan Gardner, Virgin Books in the UK, £11.99, Dutton Adult in the US, $26.95 (hardcover)

Reviewed by Jonathan Beard

PREDICTING the future is a tricky business, yet scientists and economists keep publishing books that confidently tell us what will

happen next year, or 50 years from now. These “experts”, says journalist Dan Gardner, have an appalling record for accuracy, but that doesn’t seem to bother them, or their eager readers, one bit.

One target in this book is Paul Ehrlich, who published The Population Bomb in 1968, forecasting famines in the 1970s as overpopulation swamped food supplies. It didn’t happen, but Ehrlich built on his success, wrote more bestsellers and even now says he was essentially correct.

Gardner not only skewers the pundits who predicted constantly rising oil prices and a Japanese takeover of the world, he also explains why we buy their books: we cannot tolerate uncertainty, and demand to know what’s in store. Supply follows demand and the predictions never stop.

hovering over the lower body of a naked woman that bares an uncanny resemblance to Picasso’s etching Minotaur assaulting girl from 1933.

Despite their outstanding beauty, the paintings alone wouldn’t keep an audience’s attention for a full-length film. Herzog maintains our interest by cutting to interviews with some of the more eccentric characters in the field. We see archaeologist Wulf Hein, dressed up in animal furs, playing the Star Spangled Banner on a reconstruction of a prehistoric flute, and Maurice Maurin, a former parfumier, sniffing the hillside for the whiff of an undiscovered cave.

The researchers’ excitement is palpable as they discuss their finds. “Every night after I came down here, I was dreaming about lions… After five days, I needed time to relax, to absorb it all,” says Julien Monney, an archaeologist (and former unicyclist).

Not even Herzog’s expert film-making will give you that sense of wonder. But with the contents of the Chauvet cave firmly locked behind a steel door, Cave of Forgotten Dreams is likely to be the closest you will get.

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