Last April, in a group of two couples, we flew to Trapani in Sicily by Ryanair, viewed this ancient city and wonderful Mount Erice perched on its scenic hill and the marvellously sited Greek temple of Segesta in the vicinity, not far from where Garibaldi won the historic battle at Calatafimi against the Bourbon troops in the 1860s.
At the harbour of Trapani we boarded a ferry, which would call at the main island of Favignana in the Egadi archipelago, famous for its tuna fisheries. Then the ferry continued to the minor port of the small island of Lévanzo.
On disembarking there, we attempted a long trek towards the west coast, and hopefully towards the famous cave known as La Grotta del Genovese, or Grotta di Cala dei Genovesi, which we had heard much about, for its famous and remarkable prehistoric cave incisions and paintings. It was not to be. We trekked over asphalt, then over badlands, reaching the island’s peak at over 300 metres. A dead end. And we had to descend back to civilisation through a steep pine forest, being very careful where to find a foothold. We had missed our chance, or so we thought.
I was back on the island two days later by ferry with my wife, after phoning the cave’s owner and caretaker Natale Castiglione. He drove in his four-wheel jeep along the east coast, then veered west through the empty landscape. He stopped his jeep at a makeshift car park. And we descended gradually over rock and grass some 600 metres, holding on to wooden crossed supports, known in Italian as transenne, until we reached a clearing.
Then Natale produced his pocket torch before the mouth of a medium-sized cave. Along with two other visitors, we bowed our heads as we entered the cave, in order to avoid hitting our heads against the cave’s roof for some metres at the entrance. Then we could stand erect again in a clear flat space. With Natale’s torch we could make out incisions in the rock on the left, and on the right cave wall. And paintings in black were clearly visible, of humans and of animals. The incised figures are of 11,000 BC, hence they are Palaeolithic, or of the earliest Stone Age. The black paintings in animal pigment are of 8,000 BC, hence they are Early Neolithic.
This prehistoric find was discovered by Francesca Minellono, a female painter from Florence, who was on holiday on Lévanzo in 1949. And the cave has been famous ever since. The finds are of a period when the Égadi islands of Lévanzo, Favignana and Marettimo were joined to Sicily, before the sea level rose to isolate them. They exhibit humans in different stances, and different Palaeolithic age animals like cave bears and deer.
Having whetted our appetite for landscape and history, we caught the ferry back to Trapani, which we reached in 30 minutes.
(Entrance upon reservation: €10. E-mail: info@grottaddelgenovese.it; www.grottadelgenovese.it. For booking information: Natale Castiglione, Infoline: 00356-0923.924032 – 339.7418800).
Le Grotte dell’Addaur: Similar Palaeolithic incisions of animals and of humans are to be found at the mountain caves of Addaura (the name is Arabic, similar to Maltese Id-Dawra), on the hill of Monte Pellegrino, just outside Palermo. But these caves are often closed to visitors because of works of restoration and maintenance.
It is therefore wise to inquire about their opening hours before attempting an excursion there. They are interesting and rewarding.
These cave incisions and paintings could give us an inkling of the way of life of our pre-Neolithic forebears, both in Sicily and in Malta.
Malta’s 23 temples of 3600-2500 BC are of an altogether much more evolved and advanced civilisation and culture. Then contacts with Sicily were both common and sporadic, over a challenging 93 kilometres of sea. Yet pottery, flint, obsidian and alabaster were still occasionally imported from Sicily and its northern or western islands, the main island itself, Lipari and Pantelleria. The ports of Pozzallo, Licata, Syracuse and Catania must have witnessed plenty of sailings towards Malta and Gozo during our Temple Period. And our history is the richer for that.