Word: chauvet
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Near France's Ardeche River, explorers discover the Chauvet cave, whose paintings are believed to be more than 30,000 years...
...REMBRANDT ON THE ROCKS: The discovery of dazzling drawings of rhinoceroses and other animals in a French cave suggests that prehistoric art did not mature in a simple linear fashion but may have been punctuated by the influence of individual geniuses. The images in the Chauvet cave date from 30,000 years ago, 12 to 18 millenniums before comparable ones at Lascaux, in France, and Altamira, in Spain, and much earlier than anyone thought possible for such realistic portraits...
...clear from the start that the cave that park ranger Jean-Marie Chauvet stumbled upon in the south of France last year was a major archaeological find. Like the famous Lascaux cave nearby, the limestone cavern was covered with spectacular paintings from the depths of prehistory. This one seemed much older, though -- maybe 20,000 years, compared to 17,000 for Lascaux -- and it contained much more artwork, including images of animals, such as owls, panthers and hyenas, that had rarely if ever been seen on cave walls...
...quality of the paintings, however, as much as their great antiquity, that makes them so surprising. The artwork in the Cosquer cave is nothing more than the crude outline of a human hand. The Chauvet cave drawings, made 30 centuries earlier, are exquisitely rendered likenesses that use the caverns' natural contours to heighten a sense of perspective. The contrast suggests that the art of early man did not mature steadily in any simple linear fashion. Says Patrice Baghain, a regional director of the French Culture Ministry: "It throws the entire notion of progressive artistic development into question...
...cave-rich Ardeche region may not be finished yielding treasures. Some 200 painted caves have already been found in the area. As the Chauvet cave has shown -- twice so far -- it is premature to conclude that there are no big surprises left...