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The cave and his discovery.
The discovery and the popularization of the primitive human messages in the Cave of the Genoese it goes up again to 1949, when Francesca Minellono, a Florentine painter, during a brief period of vacation on the island, pushed by the curiosity it inserted him in the narrow burrow. Of the amazing recovery they were in the order informed the prof. Paul Graziosi of the institute of Paletnologia Umana of the university in Florence and the superintendent for the antiquities of Western Sicily Jole Bovio Marconi. It didn't spend too much therefore time because to Levanzo they were activated the first character searches scientific: the reproductions were performed on polish of the wall representations and some stratigraphical excavations effected him.
Well soon he determines' that the recovered graffiti go up again to 11-12 thousand years ago, or to the final phase of the Paleolitico, a little before that is that the sea swallowed that edges of earth that made the Egadis it departs integral of Sicily and the paintings to 5-6 thousand years ago, or better at the end of the Neolitico, when Levanzo was already an island.
Incisions, graffiti and paintings prehistoric representing bucks, cattle, horses, fishes and use human figures represent an inestimable archaeological documentation and a fascinating show under the profile archelologgico.
The cave of the Genoese is found along the north-western coast of the island of Levanzo, the smallest but not the least enchanting of the Egadis, to around thirty meters on the tall and steep calcareous walls that are risen him of forehead. The entrance of formation carsica leans out on a small cove and you/he/she is edged by the vegetation typical of the Mediterranean stain, offering a scenery of great landscape suggestion.
The various evolutions carsiche has determined to the cave a particular morphology, in fact the cave is composed from an ample room of entry commonly defined "antegrotta", from which is entered through a narrow and lower part burrow to a said less tall and longer inside room "retrogrotta." The antegrotta preserves the rests of a furnace for the manufacture of the going up again mortar to age I delay medieval and, in recent epochs, you/he/she was used by the farmers of the island as stall and refuge for agricultural utensils. The retrogrotta, that guards to his/her inside trentatrč engraved figures and hundred painted figures that the richest Italian inheritance of the prehistoric expressionism is been defined. Known to the island ones only as good posting of hunting, in which nobody was ever penetrated except some ferret occasionally introduced to uncover you the rabbits. Among the levanzaris, however, voices circulated around the presence of "registrations" in the dark room, probably for the stories of some unaware explorer to have come upon in prehistoric representations.
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The incisions primarily represent animals of big ransom, even if they there was room for four human representations; all the graffiti have been dated to the final phase of the Paleolitico Superiore, or to the period of passage from the geologic era pleistocenica to that olocenica, when the due climatic changes to the regression of the continental glaciers, they forced the man to the adaptation to a changed ecosystem and to the adoption of some cultural changes that you/they turned him/it from simple hunter into hunter, fisherman and collector of molluscs.
To Levanzo it seems to verify him in reduced version the same great expressive phenomenon that invested the region in the Paleolitico Superiore frank-cantabrica, leaving sublime reproductions of animals very similar to those of the Cave of the Genoese. The walls and the times of the two Pyrenean caves more notes, that of Altamira in Spain and that of Lascaux in France, preserves about ten paintings paleolitiche, in a naturalistic style that he/she sees in Italy his/her maximum expression in the incisions of Levanzo.
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The animal kinds engraved of the Cave of the Genoese are the Cervus Elaphus (buck), the Bos Primigenius (ox-bull), the Equus Asinus Hidruntinus (small equide), and perhaps a feline or other decipherable beast hardly.Almost all the animals are represented in profile and they are lacking, having been performed with the aid of an only line that it delimits the contours of it, of particular insides of the body; they make exception a bull frontally reproduced and an equide for which the eye has been delineated. The animals of Levanzo strongly have a naturalistic distinctive line; also being absent particular insides of the body and any artifice chiaroscurale, the attempt to reproduce what was observed in nature he/she succeeds to the perfection, revealing himself/herself/itself evident in a fawn that turns the head, immortalized in the action to observe what it happens to its shoulders, in the scene of the bull that pursues a cow, and in the representation of a bull in run, where the movement is dearly described. The capture of the fauna represented to Levanzo dressed again without doubt a primary importance for the survival of the man of the Paleolitico. Insofar also the simple observation of the animals had to arouse in the minds a great suggestion, that aroused feelings of adulation which outlet was given in the wall representations.
Three anthropomorphous figures are gathered in a scene that articulates around to a central character of prominent dimensions, this last is lacking of the braccias, it has the head to form of wedge, a long beard and a belt. The side subjects are of smaller dimensions, and contrarily of the central, rigid and statuary representation, they seem to be in movement, perhaps in dance around to a character of tall rank. The figure has been performed in profile to the left, with the widened braccias, and with a headgear to form of bird or horse, instead that introduces to the right an undulated body and head to form of wedge from which a long plume hangs. This group is characterized by a strong schematismo, making impossible to bring back some particular realizzativo of the three subjects to the realism found in the animal representations; nevertheless the three human figures can remember, for the anatomical inaccuracy that characterizes her, the anthropomorphous paintings of the very famous caves of the region frank-cantabrica. The fourth human figure engraved in the Cave of the Genoese is constituted by two legs in run; a strong symbolic meaning could be deduced out by the lack of every other anatomical detail some inferior limbs, but in this document graffiti seems evident the annulment of the stylization and the return to the naturalism verified in the animal representations.
The dating of the incisions of Levanzo has been, if not simple, particularly easy; in fact fortune wanted that Paul Graziosi during the excavations from him conducted in the cave in the summer 1953, recovered in a layer not rehandled a lastrina in bringing calcareous stone the incision of a bull (today exposed Salinas in Palermo to the museum), in a style very similar to that of the wall representations. The dating performed with the technique of the carbon 14 on a hull of Limpet Ferruginea has allowed to date the layer, and accordingly the wall incisions, to 9680 B.C.
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All the paintings of black color are been dated to the final phase of the epoch Neolitica, in the moment in which the agricultural techniques and of breeding they were by now well you consolidate and universally you use, and the first human groups were about to appropriate some complex metallurgical knowledges.
Very known, not only in academic environment, they are the fourteen painted idolettis of the cave; six of them, that you/they remember a flask or a violin (idoletti "en violon"), have a globular form with bulgy belly, central narrowing and braccia reduced appendixes to lower case letters, the remainders eight have cylindrical form and superior arts just mentioned as you/he/she were observed in the precedents six.
The idolettis of Levanzo find precise comparisons in the simulacris fittili and in stone referable to the cult of the fertility recovered in numerous sites Mole-Eneolitici of the Mediterranean; I am confirmation of it the Clay figurines, of the Cicladis, of the Iberian Peninsula and of Sardinia, entirely similar to the idols of the Cave of the Genoese. Insofar also to Levanzo he affirms the cult of the Generating (Mother Goddess) Mother, attested him along an ample temporal arc, that goes a great deal from remote phases of the superior Paleolitico to the late Age of the Bronze, extending himself/herself/itself in the whole Europe and partly of Asia. The chronological position of the idolettis in epoch Mole-Eneolitica you/he/she is subsequently guaranteed by the stratigraphical data furnished by the excavations performed in the fifties, that showed the presence in the tallest levels of the cave of diffused ceramics in the whole Sicily at the end of the fourth millennium A.C.
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In the cave many painted animals also exist in a coarse naturalistic style, where the forms are almost always strange and the movement is never mentioned. A tuna and a dolphin constitute the most ancient representations of fishes known in Europe.
The anthropomorphous pictorial representations of Levanzo are strongly stylized, the body is almost always thread-like and the limbs are long and thin, opposite, in some subjects the volume of the body exponentially increases, and the limbs shorten until almost to disappear.
An only painting in red, representative a man with sinuous body and head to form of wedge, is referable to the epoch paleolitica, it is in fact entirely similar to the character positioned to the right in the scene of dance rather described, and you/he/she is therefore to considered reason coeva to the incisions.
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To visit the Cave of the Genoese you can choose among the excursion in boat (meteo-maritime conditions allowing) or in fuoristrada. Reached the cave, a guide will accompany you to the inside, illustrating you all the paintings and the prehistoric incisions.
Just disembarked to the I bring of Levanzo it will be enough to turn to our counter where a collaborator will give you all the information to start the excursion.
We remind you that it is necessary to book the excursion in advance phoning the numbers 0923/924032 - 339/7418800
Hourly departures: 10,30 - 15,30 Duration of the excursion: 2 hours
Se preferite l'escursione in barca, avrete la possibilitą di proseguire l'escursione con il periplo dell'isola, sostando per un bagno in una delle caratteristiche calette dell'isola (Cala Tramontana, Cala Calcara, Cala Minnola).
Duration of the excursion + turn of the island with standstill and bath: 3ore
To the return from the excursion, for superior groups to 15 people, tastings of typical (excluded the months of July, August, September) products are also organized.
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