Located in southern France, the Cave of Pont d’Arc holds the earliest-known and best-preserved figurative drawings, dating back to the Aurignacian period (30,000–32,000 BP). PHOTO: Nat Geo
The Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc has been ferociously protected by the French Ministry of Culture. An exceptional testimony of prehistoric art, the cave was closed off by a rock fall and remained sealed until its discovery in 1994. The images demonstrate techniques of shading, combinations of paint and engraving, three-dimensionality and movement.
Around 36,000 years ago, someone living in a time incomprehensibly different from ours began to draw on its bare walls: profiles of cave lions, herds of rhinos and mammoths, a magnificent bison off to the right, and a chimeric creature—part bison, part woman—conjured from an enormous cone of overhanging rock. Other chambers harbor horses, ibex, and aurochs; an owl shaped out of mud by a single finger on a rock wall; an immense bison formed from ocher-soaked handprints; and cave bears walking casually, as if in search of a spot for a long winter’s nap. The works are often drawn with nothing more than a single and perfect continuous line. In all, the artists depicted 442 animals over perhaps thousands of years, using nearly 400,000 square feet of cave surface as their canvas.
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