Behind the walls of the Morgiou cove lies an extraordinary human adventure: a second secret entrance to the Cosquer cave, essential to its preservation and study. Thirty years later, the person who discovered it testifies this Wednesday for the first time on ICI Provence.
ICI Provence reveals to you the long-kept secret history of the second entrance to the Cosquer cavea superior access hidden in the calanques of Marseille, the discovery of which was decisive for the exploration and preservation of this major prehistoric site. If Henri Cosquer officially declared the cave in 1991, it was Thierry Bettondiver, climber and speleologist, who very early sensed the existence of another entrance. From his first solo dive, he “immediately the intuition that there is an entrance from the top”.
After a dozen risky attempts, he discovered mars 1992 this second entrance, located under a narrow and dangerous cavity, a “cat flap ” less than a meter in diameter. By crossing this passage, it leads to “a magical gallery of concretions” and immediately understands the importance of his find. This entrance keeps the cave in overpressurewhich “lowers the water inside and thus protects the prehistoric engravings “.
The exploration is marked by a mixture of intense emotions: “The adrenaline of exploration”“emotion in front of this landscape of concretions”but also the fear of being “alone, underground, cut off from the world, in absolute darkness”. Very quickly a crucial question arises: “Who to talk to about it? “. Thierry Betton chooses discretion and takes his brother Régis and a few close friends into his confidence, including Luc Vanrelldiver passionate about prehistory.
For more than thirty years, a pact of silence is respected”in the name of the security and preservation of the site”. This silence is all the more justified as the cave has already been mourned by the death of three divers in 1991. The State imposes extreme caution and classifies numerous documents as sensitive, or even “almost a defense secret..
A key role in scientific exploitation
In the 1990s, the Betton-Vanrell team played a key role in the scientific exploitation of the site. They use this high entrance to maintain the weather station and, above all, to provide secure access. In 1998, they carried out an unprecedented project: a via ferrata inside a prehistoric underwater caveunder conditions described as “extremes”. The days are long, the sea dangerous, but “we were carried by a wonderful atmosphere, an exceptional site “.
This arrangement changes everything. Thanks to the high entrance, “venerable prehistorians like Jean Clottes” can access Cosquer without being confirmed divers. Access becomes “decisive for the knowledge of Cosquer” and notably allows the 3D digitization of the cave, at the origin of Cosquer Mediterraneanthe response open to the public.
Today, if the actors in this adventure are finally coming out of the shadows, it is neither out of a search for recognition nor out of financial interest. Thierry Betton explains wanting “leave a trace of this wonderful collective adventure”. His brother Régis speaks of “a form of justice” to tell “the submerged part of the truth “.
