ShowCaveBlog

The newest novel in the Ayla series of author and archaeologist Jean M. Auel is named The Land of Painted Caves. The book is intended as the final novel of the series, the sixth and last installment, and tries to fix all the open ends.

The Earth’s Children series started with The Clan of the Cave Bear more than 30 years ago. It tells the story of the Cro Magnon girl Ayla which looses his parents in an earthquake and is adopted by a clan of neanderthals. But soon Ayla discovers that she is different and she has to leave the clan. Living in exile she makes friend with a horse and a dog, then she meets a Cro Magnon man from France, and travels with him across Europe meeting different cultures until they finally reach the Vezere river in France with its high population and culture. The newest book tells about her family life, the culture and believes of the people 20,000 years ago in the Dordogne.

What Auel does is simple: she uses the archaeologic knowledge to construct the background, then she tells all the details in a stirring story. As a result the readers learn a lot about the Palaeolithic while reading a novel. This strategy is actually not new, it was used by British historians in books about the Middle Ages, like Ivanhoe or books on the King Arthur legend. Inspired by such historic novels, the first novel of a stone age story was Rulaman by David Friedrich Weinland.

Much of the details in such books are speculation, we actually do not know about the religious belief of that time, we just interpret the findings with the knowledge from anthropologic examinations of still existing stone age cultures. So the book is actually a speculation. And as it is a vehicle to explain archaeologic knowledge, Ayla the heroine is the one who makes all the new inventions of the era, inventing the needle with a hole, domestication of animals, hunting techniques, and much more. Probably a drawback to the story, but a great way to speculate how important inventions were made.

• Where I write: Jean M. Auel works late in her Southwest Portland condo | OregonLive.com
  (visited: 27-MAR-2011)

Caves are popular in movies, generally as creepy places and home of monsters, or ideal to tell a lost and found story. But very few movies have caves as main topic. This year two great movies appear, both with a cave as the main topic. And both are filmed in 3D.
The first is Cave of Forgotten Dreams, made by Werner Herzog. It is actually a documentary, but its a full size movie. Herzog does not believe in 3D, but he thought it was the only way to document the placstic paintings and reliefs of the Cave Chauvet in the Ardeche Valley in France. This cave is one of the most famous art caves and not open to the public, so this movie is the best was to have a look.
The second movie is totally different, the cave diving action movie Sanctum by James Cameron. The story is based on a dive by an Australian cave diver and friend of Cameron. But the result is a simple story about deadly cave with extraordinary 3d pictures of caves.
We could not find info on Floyd Collins, a movie about the death of the cave explorer Floyd Collins, who got trapped in Sand Cave in Kentucky during the Cave Wars. The movie is produced by Billy Bob Thornton, and is still listed as “in development” on imdb.com. Will probably be released later this year.

Norwich is said to have the UK’s largest amount of subterranea, mostly medieval, vaulted cellars. Norwich Heritage Economic and Regeneration Trust (Heart) has commissioned a researcher to explore them. The goal is obviously to make them available to the public. This may include both, an underground sight open to the public, and online documentation of closed cellars. During the annual Heritage Open Days there were tours through a small section of the cellar, which were very popular. However, it seems the extend of the cellars is almost unknown, and there are a lot of rumors, for example one telling of a tunnel from the Cathedral to St Andrew’s Hall, which monks are supposed to have used to go and do inappropriate things with women. Such stories are fun, but they are rarely true…

James Cameron is world famous, with Titanic the director made the best selling film of all times. Now he has launched Avatar, which has smashed his own record. And the next movie is already in the queue: Sanctum. However, director is this time Alister Grierson, not Cameron.
It is a story about cave diving. A team of cave divers exploring an Australian underwater cave is in deadly danger by the collapse of the entrance. Actually this type of story always ends pretty fast with the death of the divers, as the air runs out. But it seems this time the divers have to stay several days in the cave and finally make it back to the surface. Such an unlikely story actually happened, the movie is based on the experiences of the Australian Andrew Wight. He co-produced Cameron’s underwater documentaries.
James Cameron’s Sanctum filmed in Australia | Herald Sun

The Philippine government has released PHP 5 million (some €75,000, $100,000) for the development of the Sohoton Cave on Samar island, Eastern Visayas. The cave was already part of a National Park and guided, with a boat ride to the cave and a walk through the cave with men holding lamps. Now it will be improved with electric light and paths.
It seems the Phillipines learned what most first world countries already know: one reason for a show cave is the cave protection. If people are guided and must stay on a trail with handrail, they are not able to touch and destroy anything.

BusinessWorld Weekender: Samar to have country’s first ‘show cave’

We do not know why they wrote it was the first show cave of the country. Showcaves.com has liste numerous show caves. Probably it’s a matter of how one defines the term show cave.

An article on NPR catched our attention: Texting Underground Can Save Lives and Caves. It tells about an 16 year old boy named Alexander Kendrick, who invented an underground texting device. With this invention he won the 2009 International Science Fair and received a new computer, a trip to Switzerland and US$12,000 in checks.
While we are impressed by his work, we suggest he should visit Felix Ziegler of Cave-Link when he is in Switzerland. He invented the same device several years ago, but his device does not text through 1,000 feet of solid rock, it actually send through 1,200 metres of solid rock. It also sends the data of data loggers, is small and robust, does not need a huge and fragile antenna, and does not omit the h of happy. The work of Kendrick is definitely great, but actually it is not new. Diana Northup should have known that.

After our last blog some minutes ago, we mentioned that there was no entry since July, almost half a year without show cave news. Actually we are not dead, the site is still maintained and the blog still lives. However there was not a single story which fit into this blog all this time.

Actually there are lots of comics with various topics. And there are even a few which include caves. Pretty funny is the Little Asshole comic of German Walter Moers, with one story telling about a guided tour through a show cave. The little asshole is able to annoy the guide in no time.
Now there is a new comic about caves, from a different genre. UNDERGROUND is a five issue color series about Park Ranger Wesley Fischer as she tries to save Stillwater Cave. Its a sort of crime story or thriller.
The comic is written by Jeff Parker, drawn by Steve Lieber, and colored by Ron Chan. It is not published yet, but as a preview the first issue may be downloaded in black and white as a pdf file from their website.

The underground power plant of a gunpowder factory was opened in 1927, between the World Wars. It was built underground in the fear of another war, which was obviously realistic. And gunpowder is an important good during war times. Underground the plant was both: covered up and hidden from the enemy, and protected against air strikes.
The plant was closed in 1972 and replaced by a oil fueled plant on the surface. The equipment was sold as waste metal in the late 1990s. Now the current owner, chemicals firm Nitrokemia Zrt, tries to sell the underground structure.
The underground power plant is located near Balatonfuzfo, at central Europe’s biggest lake, the Balaton, 110km west of the capital Budapest.
It consists of three huge halls with concrete walls, in two storeys. Four coal furnaces the size of a small bus fed two power generators. This place was so hoot, the worke only wore their underpants.
The entrance into the plant is an unassuming office block. First a spiral staicase, then a steep concrete tunnel, lead down to the iron gallery high on the wall of the first hall. The power plant burned up to 275,000 tonnes of coal a year.

For Sale: Vintage underground Hungarian power plant | Lifestyle | Reuters

Scientists in Alaska discovered moonmilk in a cave. Sounded weird to us, as moonmilk is a rather common speleothem found in many caves. However, the article Southeast cave life chews through rock tells this.
We thought a while about this and what we guess is, the news interpretation shows simply that the writer did not understand the scientists.
Moonmilk is a white dripstone which contains a lot of tiny blisters, as a result it is light, full of water and rather soft. It seems the scientists found out that microorganisms are essential for its formation, and actually there are various theories how moonmilk is formed, and none is very good. The connection with microorganisms has been guessed before, but as far as we know there have been no successful examinations which support this theory so far. We will have an eye on future publications, actually this is an interesting topic.