"Gerard Jourdy, 63 ... said he saw a sculpture of a face made from a stalactite ...."This alleged finding of a stalactite face is being downplayed by the French authorities, but we have no doubt that this art actually exists as Jourdy has described it.
Recall, that there is a stalactite face in Kents Cavern (view "the Face" under "Virtual Tour") in Torquay, England, which we have said all along is not only a natural formation but which was surely sculpted in part by human hand to form a human "one-eyed" Cyclopian face, and Vilhonneur would be a second such stalactite sculpture which would confirm this form of prehistoric cave art. Indeed, perhaps coincidentally (or not), even in today's modern world, the village of Vilhonneur is unique in France for its "stone-cutting", perhaps retaining an ancient tradition of this art.
In terms of my astronomical decipherment of megalithic sites in Stars Stones and Scholars, the megalithic site of Saumur in the north of Poitou Charentes in France represents Ursa Major in the ancient survey of France.
Vilhonneur is in the south of Poitou Charentes. In the same era to which I have identified the astronomy in the Cave of the Dead Man at Lascaux, i.e. 9273 B.C. , Vilhonneur would have marked the Vernal Equinox below Ursa Major.
As written by the Associated Press and reported at CTV.ca :
"A single face drawn in the cave could be among the world's oldest known graphic representations of a human face, said Jean-Yves Baratin, archaeology curator for the Poitou-Charentes region.If my astronomical interpretation of this cave art is correct, then the two split pieces of calcite forming the hair of the face mark the Vernal Equinox in that era at Vilhonneur.
The face is "represented in the most elementary way,'' Baratin said.
He said two pieces of calcite that split were used to form the hair with two black horizontal strokes depicting the eyes. A vertical stroke formed the nose and another horizontal stroke the mouth." [emphasis added]
A skeleton has been found in the cave and the art in the cave is being dated according to the dating of the bones of the skeleton, but this of course is improper and very unscientific. The skeleton could have been there long before the art was created. It is the art which must be dated separately and this art, I am sure, does not go back to 25000 BC or earlier, as currently claimed by the archaeologists, but rather to ca. 9000 B.C., as at Lascaux (our calculation by astronomy).
At the cave of Chavet-Pont-d'Arc, which we think is older than Lascaux, we have determined that the gallery of hands marks Cassiopeia viz. Perseus and Pleiades (the "blue stars") just below Cassiopeia (see page 322 of Stars Stones and Scholars ), which at ca. 9000 BC marked the Winter Solstice. There is a "blue cobalt hand" at Vilhonneur which would then also mark the Pleiades plus Perseus and Cassiopeia at the Winter Solstice in ca. 9000 B.C.
