After the retreat of Neanderthals across the European continent, modern humans made their way to this cave and began to create the first known works of pictorial art: buffaloes surging across the rock background, rhinoceroses doing battle, lions searching for mates and dark-maned horses cantering.
Twenty years after these cave paintings were discovered near the Ardeche river in south-central France, they remain closed to the public for preservation. But on Saturday, a replica built nearby at a cost of $59 million opened to the public, allowing them to approximate the experience of the cave explorers who found the paintings.
The rock art in the Chauvet cave, created 32,000 to 36,000 years ago, puts flesh and fur and character onto a world previously known largely through fossil remains. Although archaeologists have recorded the impulse to create art in markings on rock and carved beads as far back as 75,000 years ago, the workmanship in these cave paintings is of another order. The paintings are among the world’s most celebrated prehistoric works of art, featured in Werner Herzog’s 2011 3-D movie, Cave of Forgotten Dreams .
While the paintings have been reproduced at the same size as the originals, the replica overall is slightly less than half the size of the 91,000-square-foot Chauvet cave. Kleber Rossillon, the company that manages the replica site, is planning to have groups of up to 30 enter every few minutes with a guide.
— New York Times News Service
