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The Chauvet Cave

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Introduction
The Chauvet Cave is one of the most famous prehistoric rock art sites in the world which located in the Ardeche region of southern France.
Chauvet Cave 's importance is based on two factors, firstly, is the aesthetic quality of these cave paintings. The Chauvet cave contains well-preserved and complex graphic panels of Paleolithic artwork. Secondly, the great age of the cave. The earliest paintings in the cave were made 35,000 years ago.
Fact 1: Chauvet cave contains a total of over 300 paintings and engravings.
These paintings show a wide variety of animals, 13 species in all, including ibex, mammoth, giant stags, horses, lions, bears, owls, rhinoceroses, panther, leopard, red deer, musk-oxen, aurochs. The earliest paintings …show more content…

For example, the Horse Panel and the Panel of bears in red ochre.

Fact 2 : Chauvet Cave contains an abundance of abstract art
Chauvet Cave contains many lines and dots marking which have been interpreted as deliberate abstract design in the form of geometric symbols, a number of indecipherable marks, as well as few panels of red ochre hand prints and hand stencils made by blowing pigment over hands pressed against the cave surface. Traces of ochre on the fingers caused their imprint to occasionally be visible.

Fact 3 : The presence of ancient bear skulls
Fossilized bones are abundant and include the skulls of cave bears. The soft, clay-like floor of the cave retains the paw prints of cave bears along with large, rounded depressions that are believed to be the habitat of bears. The cave was strewn with cave bear skulls, one of which was found placed on top of a rock in the middle of a deep chamber by unknown person. The skull was intentionally placed on a prominent limestone block and is part of a complex configuration that includes dozens of other cave bear skulls …show more content…

Chauvet Cave does house the earliest cave murals and exemplifies the rising cultural level of Aurignacian man during the last period of the Stone Age. Chauvet cave paintings are the oldest, also the most elaborate. The cave paintings of Chauvet represent a practice that existed for an extremely long period of time, but it is an art-form that can never be

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