Charles Hammer

The Scratchers: a Paleoart Adventure Charles Hammer

This is a tale of two adventures, one absolutely factual. In 1912 three young brothers build a rickety boat, adding two empty gasoline cans for extra flotation. Against the current of the river Volp in the French Pyrenees mountains, they paddle upstream into the darkness of a cave and discover wonders of paleolithic art engraved (scratched) on its walls. That happened just over one century ago. Now, plummet back one hundred fifty centuries deeper into time for the other adventure, the story of a 13-year-old girl who learns art and leaves her work where it can still be seen 15,000 years later. She draws the giant mammoth that roams her Ice Age land, and cave lions, cave bears bigger than grizzlies, bison and horses and huge wild bulls. People too---seldom drawn by others in the Old Stone Age. When hunger threatens her friends, she creates ?magic? bison sculptures in the cave that she does not believe are magic. Then, on the land above and to her amazement, bison appear. She uses art to baffle her tribe?s enemies. She even contends against the boy she loves, her rival in craft, becoming both artist and woman, Scratcher Woman, by adventure?s end.