THE DYNAMIC EARTH: A BLOG ABOUT GEOLOGY AND THE EARTH SCIENCES

Friday, September 12, 2008

The Cave of Lascaux

Today, September 12, is the 68th anniversary of the discovery of the famous cave paintings at Lascaux, France. These 16,000 year old cave paintings are really pretty spiffy, and include over 2000 individual paintings of figures, including Bulls...


...Horses...


...and a strange bird-headed man being charged by a Bull. Note the Rhino in the lower left of the picture below (scientific fact: Rhinos are cool).


The Cave was discovered by four boys out for a jaunt in 1940. It has since become one of the most important Paleolithic sites in the world, and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979. There is a pretty slick Lascaux Website run by the French Ministry of Culture that has lots of pretty pictures of the cave art, and more info about the research that has gone on there.

Everybody should go out and kill a mammoth in honor of their ancestors today; barring that, I guess drinking a beer in their honor would be alright, too.

3 comments:

Silver Fox said...

Nice pics, but not even any bison nearby for me to go after! Would a coyote count? ;)

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lascaux bull painting said...

Nice post. Lascaux is a must visit for Paleolithic cave paintings. The basic designs consist of huge animals. You can see around 2000 figures in this cave. The figures are divided into animals, human beings and abstract things. The Great Hall of the Bulls is very famous. The painting of four huge bulls is amazing. The best time to visit this caves is between July and August.