Finding caves is always mysterious. Recently, the history of one such discovery celebrated its anniversary.
82 years ago, in mid-September, several teenagers from France accidentally discovered the cradle of primitive art – the Lascaux cave. One of them saw a narrow hole, which was formed after the fall of a tree damaged by lightning. What was inside amazed the whole world.
With the help of simple tools, teenagers managed to get inside. The walls and ceiling of the great hall were decorated with drawings of animals. The young people did not know what to do, so they decided to report the find to their teacher, who studied primitive society. Henri Breuil was the first explorer to see the cave, authenticate the rock carvings and describe them.
The teacher made many measurements of the discovered cave. After a detailed analysis, he attributed the images to the Perigord culture. Later, Henri Breuil returned to the study of the Lascaux cave with other scientists. They expected to find ancient remains there, but instead, new rock paintings were discovered.
In total, during the entire period of research, scientists managed to find almost 2 thousand images. Basically, these were drawings of artiodactyl animals – bulls, bison, horses and so on. One of the mysterious scenes is the drawing of a falling man between two animals.
Lasko was one of the first Paleolithic caves to be dated using radiocarbon dating. The first results indicated that the cave was often visited during the era of Magdalenian culture. But later it was tried to refute. In 1998, the dates changed, indicating frequent visits to the cave during the era of the Solutrean culture.
However, today there is no exact dating of the rock carvings. It remains to be hoped that further research will still be able to shed light on the amazing drawings and their origin.
