The cave environments of Speleos are inspired by one of the hypogea of greatest naturalistic and archaeological interest in the world: the Montespan Caves.
It was the morning of August 19, 1922 and in full, unconscious, solitude Norbert Casteret made a first reconnaissance of the cave. He courageously immersed himself in the first siphon, a first flooded section, unaware of its width, more than 50 meters from the entrance of the cave, and strong in his notable breathing capacity, he traveled it all the way out in the darkness of a cave.
This first reconnaissance convinced him to return in the afternoon better equipped, with more candles and matches protected from the water. He passed the first siphon to a large room with a small beach and with flows of fresh air coming from above.
He had walked about 180 meters from the mouth of the Montespan cave, in complete solitude, among unknown environments made of dripping black stalactites, dark water pools, sand and collapsed rocks. He faced a new siphon beyond which he found himself in an even larger environment. He was 300 meters from the entrance.
He explored its ravines, clambering with difficulty over large boulders that stood in his way. He encountered tadpoles and rotting branches that indicated flowing water. He pushed on, driven by that unfathomable desire for discovery, to the utmost of his energy. After five hours he returned to the open in the darkness of the night.
Discoveries in the Montespan Caves
In the summer of 1923 he returned with another speleologist, Henri Godin, and they pushed further than they had reached the previous year . Casteret had collected little evidence of human presence, including a tooth of “ Bos primigenius ” that was certainly brought to those places by human hands. The spirit of this second exploration was strongly oriented towards finding confirmation of this.
New and larger rooms were explored, full of calcareous concretions, clay expanses, smooth stone slabs and frozen water ponds. It was in the last room that the two speleologists had the confirmation that this mysterious space had, millennia before, represented a sacred place for prehistoric men.
A rough clay figure evoked a bear, with paws stretched out and between them the remains of its skull, the body scratched by propitiatory blows. Then in the flickering light of the candles appeared, graffitied or modeled in clay, tigers or lions, horses, bison, reindeer, hyenas, mammoths as well as magical signs and handprints including fingerprints in the areas of excavation of the clay.
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