Lascaux

Cave system near Montignac-sur-Vezère in the Dordogne, southwestern France, with prehistoric wall art, discovered in 1940. It is richly decorated with realistic and symbolic paintings of aurochs (wild cattle), horses, and red deer of the Upper Palaeolithic period (Old Stone Age, about 15,000 BC), preserved under a glaze of calcite formation.

Many of the paintings are drawn over former works, enabling the development of style to be traced over more than 1,000 years, particularly in the treatment of horns, antlers and hooves. The later paintings, featuring animals along with signs and symbols that may be tribal marks or signify a form of sympathetic hunting magic, exhibit an advanced artistic quality and technical skill. Colours – red ochre and manganese dioxide – were rubbed onto the surface, or blown by a tube. Engraving and carving were also employed. At Lascaux, the more usual form of cave art, single representations, is elaborated to depict groups such as the apparent group of swimming deer.

Lascaux may have been a ritual centre, but the reason for the art remains open to interpretation.

The opening of the Lascaux cave to tourists led to deterioration of the paintings; the cave was closed in 1963 and a facsimile opened in 1983. Reconstruction of cave art has been useful in suggesting how long it would have taken to complete a work. Similar prehistoric art is found in Altamira, Spain.