Horror, Sleaze and Trash.

In 1994 Eliette Brunel-Deschamps, Christian Hillaire and Jean-Marie Chauvet decided to venture into a cave system located in South France that had been sealed off 29,000 years prior by a rockslide. Once deep into the cave system, they discovered cave paintings that were so well preserved that they were initially unsure of how recently they had been done. There were bear footprints and nesting divets in the cave floor as well as two sets of footprints walking alongside one another that looked to belong to a child and a wolf. Under a dome-like structure made from ancient rock formations, the walls of the Chauvet Cave were covered in dozens of pieces of flowing artwork that showed ancient predatory animals that roamed the valleys thousands of years in the past. Despite having various artists, each painting was done with the same artistic style and the same amount of perfection. What was extraordinary about these paintings was not the age of the art but the level of talent needed to create it: Each painting seemed to be one flowing movement of a finger or paint brush, with animals morphing into one another and there being seemingly no mistakes in the entire cave.

After french archeologist Jean Clottes carbon dated the rock formations within the cave system, he hypothesized that there were two time periods in which the cave was inhabited by our ancestors: One time period of 37,000 to 33,500 years and one time period of 33,000 to 28,000 years ago. It was the time period of 37,000 years ago, or the Aurgnacian period that was responsible for the highly skilled cave paintings. The only human to ever step foot in the cave system during the later time period was a small child that was accompanied by either a wolf or a large dog. To date, this is the earliest known proof of wolves coexisting with humans. Oddly enough, the child was the last person to step foot within the cave system for nearly 20,000 years due to it being sealed off from the front while the child was inside. The footprints led inside the cave, but never led out.

Among the paintings of hyenas, lions, and other predatory animals, there were stencils of handprints using red ochre. Scientists hypothesize that these were done by lighting the cave wall with a torch then stenciling the handprint. Outside of the obvious depictions of animals that were once our ancestors biggest predators, there were abstract markings and shapes amongst the art that lead some scientists to believe this time period was involved in ritual or shamanic practices.
One painting in particular showed an erupting volcano spewing lava in the valley; at the time of the painting, there was an active volcano near the site proving that this is the earliest depiction of an erupting volcano.

By 2011, more than 80 radiocarbon tests were done using samples taken from burnt torch marks on the walls, the red ochre used in the paintings, as well as animal bones within the cave system. Each of those tests suggests that the Chauvet Cave paintings are the earliest depictions of figurative art on the planet.

Scientists hypothesize that homosapiens evolved into what we know as “humans” in Africa nearly 200,000 years ago. Despite looking like you and I, their level of cognitive and intellectual functioning has always been a matter of debate: Did they perceive the world the way we do, or did it take time for us to develop cognitively? With the carbon dating of Chauvet paintings, scientists believe that the way humans perceived the world even 40,000 years ago is similar to how we perceive it now.

Cold Case Blogger