Word: caved
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Then, in the pale glow of their head lamps, the explorers noticed two red lines on a cavern wall. Chauvet, a government employee who oversees the protection of the many historically important caves in the region, recognized the markings as "characteristic of the Stone Age.'' What he did not immediately realize-and the world did not know until the French Culture Ministry announced it last week-was that they had discovered an archaeological trove that may rival even the fabled drawings on the cave walls at Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain. The spelunkers had found an extraordinarily clear...
...species represented on the walls of the Chauvet cave, as it has already been named, had never before been seen in prehistoric artwork: an owl engraved in rock and a panther depicted in red pigment. The image of a hyena, also painted in red, is only the second one discovered in Stone Age caves...
...particular interest to Jean Clottes, France's foremost expert on prehistoric rock art, is the fact that, in contrast to previous cave artwork, images of predatory and dangerous species-bears, lions, rhinos, a panther and a hyena-far outnumber the horses, bison, deer and mammoths usually hunted by Stone Age people. "The paintings in this cave," he says, "will force us to change how we interpret Stone...
Stung by lessons learned at Altamira and Lascaux, where initial unrestricted access to the caves obliterated archaeological clues and led to the rapid deterioration of artwork, the French Culture Ministry has put the Chauvet cave off limits to all but a handful of experts and installed video surveillance cameras and police guards at the entrance. "Our goal," says Baghain, "is to keep the cave in this virgin state so that research can, in theory, continue indefinitely...
...further research is needed to establish one fact about the Chauvet cave art: it was created by artists of remarkable talent. "I remember standing in front of the paintings of the horses facing the rhinos and being profoundly moved by the artistry," says Clottes. "Tears were running down my cheeks. I was witnessing one of the world's great masterpieces...