Essay On Lascaux Cave Paintings

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The Lascaux cave paintings is a series of caves that are decorated with ancient cave paintings, near the village of Montignac, France. The cave’s interior walls and ceilings are The extravagant paintings in the Lascaux cave, offers valuable insight into the era and level of intelligence these early hominids possessed. The Lascaux caves were discovered during World War II in a German-occupied section of France on September 12, 1940 (Cannon, 2006). Three local adolescents and two refugees of war were wandering through a field when they heard a dark barking. The dog fell into a small hole near the base of a tree. One of the Adolescents, a boy by the name of Ravidat, went in to save the dog and fell nearly twenty feet onto a sandy bottom. Ravidat and his companions stumbled across what is now known as Lascaux, named after a Chateau that resided on the property. What Ravidat was not aware of at the time, but the cave he stumbled …show more content…

One painting depicts a man fatally wounding a bison with a spear, but himself mortally wounded from being gored. The paintings also have hand and forearm outlines, possibly being some sort of ancient signature. Many of the paintings also tell a story through artistic detail. One painting titled Falling Horses, was painted upside down. Many researchers regard the meaning behind the painting, as ancient hunters would drive herds over the side of cliffs. One of the most famous paintings, is of a prehistoric animal that is not known to man. The painting is titled The Apocalyptic Beast, which researches speculate is an ancient ox or rhinoceros. Breuil and other Archeologists determined the Lascaux paintings may be as old as 15,000 to 10,000 B.C.E., with other researchers believing the cave may be from an older period (Cannon, 2006). Archeologists adopted this new period that they coined, the Perigordian

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