Chauvet Cave Paintings
Unknown, 30,000 BC

Links
A survey of cave painting
Lascaux Death Scene
The Dawn of Prehistoric Rock Art

"On December 25, 1994, near the village of Vallon-Pont-d'Arc, in the Ardche gorges in southern France, explorers Jean-Marie Chauvet, Eliette Brunel-Deschamps and Christian Hillaire discovered an exceptionally important gallery of Paleolithic rock art. Grotto Chauvet had been hidden and perfectly preserved due to a prehistoric landslide covering the entrance hundreds of centuries ago. First the explorers noticed a draft of air in the minor cave they were surveying. After clearing a narrow passageway they made their way down a shaft and then into a vast network of galleries and rooms, several hundred meters in length. The explorers found numerous wall paintings and remains of cave bears. Some of the cave bear skulls had been moved to a special position by humans. Since that first amazing discovery more than 300 paintings and engravings have been documented." [source]

I have always been fascinated by imagining what inspired humans to start to draw. Long before agriculture and cities, two things seemingly central to human culture, humans where painting elaborate scenes in places all over the world. Like speech, it is apparent that humans also possess an urge to create visual works of art. Looking at these paintings, they are obviously substantial works of art, and they still are aethetically appealing to us so many millenia later.

Submitted by
Hans-Christoph Steiner

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