Chauvet Cave: The Discovery of the World’s Oldest Paintings
Nov 7, 2009 Art, History, Specialist Subjects
Early cave paintings are quite an astonishing sight. Our very earliest forms of writing stretch back to around 3000 years B.C, however cave paintings have predated this by more than 10,000 years. Other examples such as the Cave of Altamira (cue Steely Dan) found in Spain have dated back as far as 18,000 years BC and for a long time these were the only examples of the earliest forms of humans expressing themselves in such a way.
However the astonishing thing about the Chauvet cave is that the paintings, found by amateur explorers, were so astonishing in quality and detail they were at first thought to be a hoax. Further more the examples were revealed to be more than 32,000 years old, considerably earlier than anything else discovered.
Now that the cave is closed to the public, this book provides an opportunity to view the paintings at first hand, revealing the mastery of our Stone Age ancestors. The pictures are clear and crisp and mostly in colour.
December 3rd, 2009 at 1:33 am
read this right after having finished W. Brian Arthur’s “the Nature of Technology” which made for a great double feature.
still can’t get over the fact that by my own measure of time, 31 years at this point, these works were done 1,000 lifetimes ago. 1,000 lifetimes!!!
speak of how the explorers felt for drafts, visions of the bear’s group hibernation chamber, consideration that these paintings were most likely done with sparse lighting, on&on. amazing piece of human history to come across.