Word: chauvet
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Probing deeper into the cavern system, they began coming upon exquisite, intricately detailed wall paintings and engravings of animals, as well as numerous images of human hands, some in red, others in black pigment. "I thought I was dreaming," says Chauvet. "We were all covered with goose pimples...
...base of a cliff in the Ardeche region in southeastern France last December, the three middle-aged spelunkers felt a breeze wafting from a pile of rock and debris. "That was a sign that there was a cave beneath it," recalls Jean-Marie Chauvet. With his companions, Chauvet cleared away an opening, then wriggled through a tunnel into a complex of large caves...
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...
Restraining their curiosity, the trio crawled back outside and resealed the tunnel entrance. "Not only to keep people out," Chauvet explains, "but to return the airflow to what it had been before; a change in the interior climate could ruin whatever was inside." Six days later they returned with better lighting and plastic sheets that they spread about to avoid disturbing artifacts on the cavern floors...
...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...