Prehistoric Art of the Lascaux Cave

Located near the village of Montignac in the Dordogne department of southwestern France, the Lascaux cave is a network of caves featuring over 600 parietal wall paintings. The paintings represent primarily large animals, typical of local contemporary fauna from the Upper Paleolithic. These works are the combined effort of many generations, with the age of the paintings usually estimated at 17,000 to 22,000 years.

Because of the outstanding prehistoric art, Lascaux was inducted into the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979 as an element of the Prehistoric Sites and Decorated Caves of the Vézère Valley. The original caves have been closed to the public since 1963 as their condition was quickly deteriorating. To allow for public viewing without harming the originals, several replicas were created. Lascaux II, an exact copy of the Great Hall of the Bulls and the Painted Gallery, was displayed at the Grand Palais in Paris before being displayed from 1983 in the cave's vicinity.

Lascaux III consists of five exact reproductions of the cave art that have been exhibited in various countries since 2012. The latest replica, Lascaux IV, is a real-scale reproduction of the integrality of the cave. Situated on the same hill as the original site, it is part of the International Centre for Parietal Art, which was inaugurated in December 2016. This museum integrates digital technology, workshops, and films into adjacent display rooms.

The cave contains nearly 6,000 figures, grouped into animals, human figures, and abstract signs. Over 900 are identified as animals, including 364 paintings of equines, 90 paintings of stags, and aurochs and bison, which each represent 4 to 5% of the images. In the deepest reaches of the cave, at the bottom of a 9m-deep well, the only human figure of the cave was depicted in a strikingly different style. The paintings use mineral pigments such as iron oxide, hematite, and goethite, and occasionally charcoal.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons