The cave’s passages, where they are not on major tour routes, are repositories of exactly this kind of preserved movement.

A researcher crawling carefully through a low passage might find the impressions of knees and hands where an ancient miner stopped to pass through a tight section.

A handprint in the wall where someone steadied themselves.

The impression of a heel where someone pivoted to look at something on the wall.

These traces of individual physical movement are not dramatic in the way that famous artifacts are dramatic.

They are, in some ways, more affecting — the specific human body in a specific space, doing a specific thing, thousands of years ago, leaving the physical record of exactly how they moved through the dark.