LASCAUX GROTTO

French Grotte de Lascaux, cave containing one of the most outstanding displays of prehistoric art yet discovered, located above the Vzre River valley near Montignac, in Dordogne, France. It is a short distance upstream from another major cave-art site, Eyzies-de-Tayac. The two sites, with some two dozen other painted caves and 150 prehistoric settlements in the Vzre valley, were added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1979. Cave painting of a bull and horse from the late Aurignacian period, in Lascaux Grotto, near Discovered by four teenage boys in September 1940, the cave was first studied by the French archaeologist Henri-douard-Prosper Breuil. It consists of a main cavern (some 66 feet [20 metres] wide and 16 feet [5 metres] high) and several steep galleries, all magnificently decorated with engraved, drawn, and painted figures. In all there are some 600 painted and drawn animals and symbols, along with nearly 1,500 engravings. The paintings were done on a light background in various shades of yellow, red, brown, and black. Among the most remarkable pictures are four huge aurochs (some 16 feet long), their horns portrayed in a twisted perspective; a curious two-horned animal (misleadingly nicknamed the unicorn), perhaps intended as a mythical creature; several red deer; bovids; great herds of horses; the heads and necks of several stags (3 feet tall), which appear to be swimming across a river; a series of six felines; two male bison; and a rare narrative composition. The narrative scene has been variously interpreted but is probably based on shamanism. Its central figure is a bison that appears to have been speared in the abdomen; hanging, or spilling, from the animal near the spear is a lined, ovular sack that may represent entrails. In front of the bison's horns, and falling away from the animal, is a bird-headed manthe only human figure depicted in the cavewith an erect phallus. Just below, or beside, the man is a stick with a bird ornament as a finial. Another spear is near the man's feet, and off to the left a rhinoceros seems to be walking away from the scene. Archaeologists have theorized that the cave served over a long period of time as a centre for the performance of hunting and magical ritesa theory supported by the depiction of a number of arrows and traps on or near the animals. Based on carbon-14 dating, as well as the fossil record of the animal species portrayed, the Lascaux paintings have been dated to the late Aurignacian (Perigordian) period (c. 15,00013,000 BC). The cave, in perfect condition when first discovered, was opened to the public in 1948. Its floor level was quickly lowered to accommodate a walkwaydestroying information of probable scientific value in the processand the ensuing pedestrian traffic (as many as 100,000 annual visitors), as well as the use of artificial lighting, caused the once-vivid colours to fade and algae and bacteria to grow over some of the paintings. Thus, in 1963 the cave was again closed. In 1983 a partial replica, Lascaux II, was opened nearby for public viewing; by the mid-1990s it registered some 300,000 visitors annually.