MORE than 20,000 years of history was rolled away this week when a team of television documentary-makers moved in to film scenes of prehistoric hunting.
The scenes are needed for an hour-long programme, titled Holy Cow, being made by a Bristol-based production company, Icon Films, about humankind's long and important relationship with cattle.
The story begins with the auroch – a distant forebear of today's cows, which once roamed forests like the Dean, providing everyday essentials for cave-dwellers brave enough to hunt them.
For Monday's shoot, Icon's production's artist has created a giant replica of a prehistoric painting in Clearwell Caves, showing an auroch hunt in progress, using locally found pigments.
It will be used as the backdrop for scenes where a shaman, or early priest, recalls such a hunt and the hazards involved. Later, the crew will shift to Cannop Ponds, to film sequences of prehistoric life, including scraping the auroch's hide, making arrowheads and needles from bone and the burial of a hunter gored by the auroch during the pursuit.
The programme's producer, Andrea Clare, said: "The Forest of Dean is an ideal location for our film.
"In prehistoric times, aurochs were the feared and dangerous inhabitants of terrain much like the one we see here, and, of course, Clearwell Caves produce traditional colour pigments very similar to those used to depict hunting scenes in cave art".
Holy Cow has been commissioned from Icon Films by WNET (Channel 13), USA, and the international distribution company, Devillier Donegan Enterprise. As yet, the transmission date has not been decided but Clearwell Caves spokesman, Ray Wright, says the reproduction cave drawing will remain in place all this summer so that visitors can view it.
The caves are open to the public from 10am to 5pm daily, and the attractions include other cave art replicas.