What is the significance of the discovery of the caves at lascaux and chauvet

Similar kinds of damage are happening not just in these prehistoric caves, but in other historic sites around the world, for different but equally threatening reasons. Machu Picchu attracts a million visitors annually. The Sistine Chapel draws upwards of 20, visitors a day. But with thousands of people breathing, sweating, sneezing, coughing or just tromping through the year-old structure, what damage are they doing, beyond just disturbing the holiness of the place?

In response to the growing threat these visitors pose, the Vatican announced in October of that going forward, it would limit the annual number of visitors to the current six million. There have been extraordinary efforts done in the past to preserve monuments at risk, Abu Simbel coming to mind. From my experience, having visited Abu Simbel, when I walked into the temple rooms, I felt as immersed in the experience as if the temple had been in its original location.

The artistic side of me wants to see the originals, to share the same room or space or tomb where the artists who created their masterpieces hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of years ago, once stood. The other part of me is terrified by the very idea that these masterpieces might be lost forever because of our own carelessness in how we treat them.

It would be a global tragedy to let this human legacy be lost forever, especially if it is preventable. And therein lies my personal moral dilemma, which I venture to think I share with many other travellers. What do you think? Would you be satisfied with a fake, however spectacular and authentically reproduced, if it meant preserving the original? I was to the Lascaux reproduction cave in recent years. The different colored stones were gathered and ground into powder between two rocks.

The powder was then mixed with animal fat, vegetable oil, blood, or spit to create paint. Table of Contents. In the absence of natural light, these works could only have been created with the aid of torches and stone lamps filled with animal fat. The pigments used to paint Lascaux and other caves were derived from readily available minerals and include red, yellow, black, brown, and violet.

No brushes have been found, so in all probability the broad black outlines were applied using mats of moss or hair, or even with chunks of raw color. The surfaces appear to have been covered by paint blown directly from the mouth or through a tube; color-stained, hollowed-out bones have been found in the caves. Tedesco, Laura Anne. New York: Cambridge University Press, Visiting The Met?

Citation Tedesco, Laura Anne. Lewin, Roger. Twenty years to the day that Chauvet and his two companions first edged their way into the cave, Paulo Rodrigues and Charles Chauveau, conservators overseeing the site, are climbing a path beyond a vineyard through a forest of pine and chestnut toward the base of a limestone cliff perforated with grottoes.

Many experts believe that early artists deliberately selected the Chauvet cave for their vision quests because of its proximity to the limestone monolith. The story begins on this footpath, in the spring of , when a veteran spelunker and friend of Jean-Marie Chauvet, Michel Rosa, known to friends as Baba, initially detected air seeping from a small chamber blocked by stones. According to close friends of both men, it was Baba who suggested the airflow was coming from a cave hidden behind the rocks.

Chauvet has maintained that Rosa—a reclusive figure who has rarely spoken publicly about the case—lost interest in the site and moved on to explore other caves. Others insist that Baba had always planned to come back—and that Chauvet had cheated him out of the chance by returning, unannounced, with Eliette Brunel six months later.

After following the path along the cliff, the conservators and I stop before a grotto used to store equipment and monitor the atmosphere inside Chauvet. Afterward, we follow a wooden walkway, constructed in , that leads to the Chauvet entrance. At last we arrive at a set of wooden steps and climb to the four-foot-high steel door that seals off the aperture. It was just a few dozen yards from this spot that another drama played out on the night of December 24, —a story that has re-emerged in the public eye and renewed old grievances.

Six days after their find, Chauvet, Brunel and Hillaire had not yet explored every chamber. Chabaud and his two friends pushed into the darkness—and became the first humans in 30, years to penetrate the Gallery of the Lions, the End Chamber, where the finest drawings were found.

I caught up with the three original discoverers—or inventeurs , as the French often call them—a few days before this past Christmas in St. All had gathered in the courtyard of the Town Hall for the 20th anniversary celebration of their find.

It had been a difficult week for them. At stake was the division of profits from the sale of tickets and merchandise, a deal said to be worth millions.

The Lascaux discoverers had never received a penny. But we were there first, on the 18th of December. We walked together back to the Town Hall, where the celebrations had commenced.

Volunteers in Santa hats served mulled wine to 50 neighbors and admirers of the cave explorers, who signed copies of a new book and posed for photos. As the light faded and the temperature dropped, Chauvet addressed the gathering in the courtyard. I studied one monumental panel, 36 feet long, drawn in charcoal. Sixteen lions on the far right sprang in pursuit of a panicking herd of buffalo.

To the left, a pack of woolly rhinos thundered across the tableau. I thought: They have been here.