The Lascaux Caves

When were the paintings discovered?

They were discovered by four local boys on
Thursday the 12th of December, 1940. This is the
official date that they were discovered on.
What kind of people made them?
Palaeolithic Cavemen.
When were they made?
The paintings have been dated to be about seventeen thousand years old,
and they are often dubbed the oldest human made paintings and the
beginning of art.
Who discovered them and how?
Marcel Ravidat was walking his dog in the woods surrounding Montignac. The
dog found a hole in the ground and crawled in to search for its inhabitants,
only to fall in. Marcel crawled into the hole, onto to find a drop that led into a
much larger cave. His three friends, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel and
Simon Coencas, all climbed down into the hole, to discover a huge cave that

had an extraordinary painting on the wall. It was a sketch of a man who was
killed during a hunt. They told their teacher, Leon Laval about the discovery.
He was so impressed, he wrote to a famous Archaeologist, Henri Breuil, who
searched and then told the world about these caves.
Why are the paintings a bit like a comic strip?
Because they are going from left to right and they
tell a story.
What kinds of things are shown in the paintings?
There are things from stories about hunting
animals to pictures of two horned unicorns.
Why did the paintings survive for such a long
time?
The paintings are not fragile, but their long
endurance was a direct result from the climate of
the cave. Black is charcoal, red and brown colours
are different kinds of clays. In caves, the low
temperature and humidity keeps the paintings
stable and it preserves them.
Why are visitors to the caves not able to see the original paintings anymore?
Because the high rate of visitors (about 2,000 a day) raised the humidity and
temperature of the cave, which started to bleach the paintings.
By Seb Calderon