FONT-DE-GAUME

cave known for its lavish prehistoric wall paintings, located in the Beune valley near Les Eyzies, in Dordogne, Fr. The cave, with its high, narrow main gallery and several side passages, contains about 200 engraved and painted figures, including bison, horses, mammoths, reindeer, aurochs, woolly rhinoceros, a wolf, and a lioness. The animals were painted in monochrome and in polychrome, usually in shades of red, brown, and black, and were often superimposed on earlier pictures, making it possible to discern a chronological sequence of artistic development. Most of the paintings probably date to the early and middle Magdalenian period, though some may be as much as 10,000 years older.