Lascaux Cave

During the early fall of 1940, four teenage boys were exploring the hills above the Vézère River near the town of Montignac in the Dordogne Valley of south central France when they stumbled on an amazing archaeological discovery. A large pine tree had fallen from the hill years before and left a hole; the intrepid group slipped into the hole and fell into what is now called the Hall of the Bulls, a 20 by 5 meter (66 x 16 foot) tall fresco of cattle and deer and aurochs and horses, painted in masterful strokes and gorgeous colors some 15,000-17,000 years ago.

Lascaux Cave is one of the world's great treasures. Exploration of its vast interior revealed about six hundred paintings and almost 1,500 engravings. Subject matter of the cave paintings and engravings are mostly animals, birds and rhinoceros and bison as well as cattle and deer and horses, and hundreds of "signs", quadrilateral shapes and dots and other patterns we'll surely never decipher. Colors in the cave are blacks and yellows, reds and whites, and were produced from charcoal and manganese and ocher, which were probably recovered locally.

Sadly, or perhaps inevitably, the beauty of Lascaux drew tremendous numbers of tourists by the late 1950s, and the traffic endangered the paintings. The cave was closed to the public in 1963. In 1983, a replica of the Hall of the Bulls was opened, and it is there that most tourists go.

The original paintings have been restored, and we are tremendously fortunate that one of the first websites on the Internet was the Lascaux Cave site--in fact, it was the first web site I ever saw, back in 1994 or so. Today it is a marvel of wonderful graphics-enhanced information, truly one of my favorite web sites. Loads of pictures from each of the rooms; pictures of the boys as they are today and history and archaeological information as well. The discussion of the deterioration of Lascaux in 1963 and what the French government did to create a replica is particularly interesting. A time line illustrates Lascaux's place in time within the collection of known Paleolithic cave art sites, and active links on the line take you to Cosquer, Chauvet, La Ferassie, Cap Blanc and other caves in the Dordogne valley.

Lascaux's web site is fully realized in French, Spanish, German, and English, and a real treat to visit. The website is a true innovation on the part of the French government, both conserving one of the world's most treasured art galleries and permitting untold numbers of visitors to see it. Someday I'll get to France to see the replica, but in the meantime, there's a wonderful web site to let us get a taste of the work of the masters of Paleolithic cave art.