The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [271]
“How do you know that?” Jondalar asked.
“Look above the hole,” she said, pointing to a smooth, bladelike pendant of rock descending from the ceiling over the hole.
Everyone looked. Because the surfaces of most of the walls and descended ceiling rocks in this chamber were coated with a soft layer of light brown clay-like material, vermiculite—a chemical alteration of the mineral constituents of the stone that softened the surface—the images were white. Drawings, engravings of a sort, could be made with a stick, or even a finger, displacing the brown-colored surface clay and leaving a pure white line underneath.
Ayla noticed that there were many white drawings in this room, but on the overhanging rock she could clearly see a horse, and an owl with its head turned around so that its face could be seen over its back. It was something owls were known to do, but she had never seen a drawing of it; she had never seen any owl drawings in any cave.
“You are right. That had to be made by the Ancients before the floor collapsed,” Jondalar said, “because no one could reach it now.”
The Watcher smiled at him, and enjoyed the incredulity in his voice. She pointed out several more of the finger-etched drawings in the large room. She took them around to the other side of the circular depression, the left wall. Although it was filled with hanging pendants of stalactites and stalagmitic pillars and circular pyramids built up on the floor, it was not difficult to move around in the room, and most of the decorations were at eye level. Even at a distance, the light from their torches showed many white engravings, some scraped to produce a white surface. Standing in the middle of the room they could see mammoths, rhinoceroses, bears, aurochs, bison, horses, and a series of curved lines and sinuous fingermarks drawn over bear claw marks.
“How many animals are in this room?” Ayla asked.
“I have counted almost twice twenty-five,” the Watcher said, holding up her left hand with all her fingers and her thumb bent at the knuckles, then opening her hand and closing the knuckles again.
Ayla remembered the other way to count with fingers. Counting with hands could be more complex than the simple counting words, if one understood how to do it. The right hand counted the words, and as each word was spoken, a finger was bent; the left hand indicated the number of fives counted. The left hand, held palm facing out, with all the fingers and thumbs bent at the knuckles, counted not five, the way she had taught herself when she first learned to count and the way Jondalar had once taught her the counting words, but twenty-five. She had learned this way of counting in her training, and the concept had astounded her. It made the counting words so much more powerful when used like that.
It occurred to her that the large dots could be a way of using the counting words, too. One handprint could be counted as five; one large dot made with only the palm of the hand could mean twenty-five; two would be twice twenty-five, fifty; and so many on the wall in one place would be a very large number, if one understood how to read it. But as with most things associated with the zelandonia, it was probably more complex than that. All signs had more than one meaning.
As they were walking around the room, Ayla saw a beautifully made horse, and behind it two mammoths, one superimposed on the other, with the line of their bellies drawn as a high arch, which made Ayla think of the massive arch outside. Was the arch supposed to represent a mammoth? Most of the animals in this chamber seemed to be mammoths, but there were many rhinoceroses, too; one in particular captured Ayla’s attention. Just the front half was engraved and it seemed to be emerging from a crack in the wall, emerging from the world behind the wall. There were also a few horses, aurochs, and bison, but no felines or deer. And while almost all of the images in the first part of the cave were made with red paint—the red ocher from the floor