A Daily Dose of History Follow
On December 18, 1994, Jean-Marie Chauvet, Éliette Brunel and Christian Hillaire were hiking and exploring along the cliffs of the Cirque d’Estré near the village of Vallon-Pont-d’Arc in southern France, when Chauvet felt a slight breeze coming from out of a small hole among a pile of fallen rocks near the entrance to a small cave. Intrigued, they widened the hole and slipped inside. Once inside, they recognized that they were in a large cave but it was too dark to see anything. All three of them being experienced speleologists (cave explorers), they retrieved the necessary equipment from their vehicle and, even though night had fallen, returned to the cave and descended into it. What they discovered delighted them—vast chambers with beautiful geological formations, the cave floor littered with animal bones. As they were leaving the cave, Brunel’s headlamp hit something that grabbed her attention. She looked carefully and she was astonished. It was a painting of a mammoth. “They were here!” she exclaimed. The three explorers then carefully examined the walls of the cave and saw upon them hundreds of paintings and engravings. They had found the oldest and best-preserved prehistoric cave art discovered to date.
Eventually 435 animal images were identified on the walls of “Chauvet cave,” art left by the humans (homo sapiens of the Aurignacian period) who inhabited the cave about 36,000 years ago.
A rockslide sealed the entrance to the cave 29,000 years ago, allowing the rare and priceless cave art to remain undisturbed, until its rediscovery, 30 years ago today.
While a replica of the cave was opened to the public in 2015, to protect the delicate paintings, access to the cave itself is limited to a select group of scientists and researchers.
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