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averns around the world hide artwork that is both mysterious and haunting. The artists of these displays were people who lived thousands of years before any written record, and they painted echoes of a past full of now-extinct creatures and untold dangers. Some of these paintings are tens of thousands of years old. Though there are examples of this prehistoric art on every continent, a few caves are especially worth visiting.
Chauvet Cave in
southern France is one of the bestknown examples of ancient cave paintings. Cave bears, mammoths, and other creatures have decorated
the walls there for close to 30,000 years, making this one of the oldest-known displays of cave art in the world. Since the cavern itself is protected for preservation purposes, a large cave replica called the Pont d’Arc Cavern was built to display copies of all the artwork so that people can come and view them. The expressive techniques show animals with repeating shapes intended to imply movement.
Sulawesi, Indonesia has cave
paintings that rival even the oldest known artwork in Europe. The discovery of these paintings made it clear that people were developing
art all over the world at about the same time, raising questions as to whether people were developing the arts individually in different places, or whether the arts were part of an older inherited tradition from a previous, shared location. Although some of the caverns that hold the oldest paintings in existence, including one of a handprint and one of the ancient pig-like babirusa, are closed to visitors, other parts of the caves can still be explored today with a guide.
Cueva de las Manos is famous for having a large number of the stenciled hand imprints that are so often present in works of ancient cave
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