Kim Adshead, age 12, of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, for her question:
How was the French cave of Lascaux discovered?
The walls of the Lascaux cave were painted at least 20,000 years ago. Its superb murals show almost life sized pictures of animals that roamed northern Europe as the last Ice Age glaciers retreated. The artistry is worthy of a place in the best of our modern galleries.
In the past century, hundreds of prehistoric art galleries were discovered on the walls of forgotten caves in northern Europe. Their discovery has been a modern drama that set archeologists smarting with shame. The characters in the story include several children and a couple of dogs, a stubborn villain and a number of strong minded heroes. It began .100 years ago in northern Spain. Don Marcelino's dog chased a fox down a hole that led to a series of half choked underground passage ways. For ten years the discovery was left unexplored.
Meantime, Don Marcelino had become interested in Stone Age relics and decided to investigate the caves on his estate. He found several stone statuettes. His five year¬old daughter, Maria, probed ahead with her pinestick torch add found a cave painted with murals of strange and wondrous animals. Don Marcelino was sure that the paintings were done by prehistoric artists and wanted to sharethem with the world. But the scholars who should have rushed to the scene and welcomed the discovery did not do so.
Instead, the archeologists pooh poohed the cave of Altamira as a fraud. Spearheaded by France's renowned expert, Cartailhac, who saw only copies of the paintings, they denounced Don Marcelino as an amateur, a cheat who had employed modern painters to fool the public. The experts persisted, and so did Il:n Marcelino. Meantime, cool minded investigators were finding more of these prehistoric art galleries in upland caves of Spain and France.
These heroes of the story were open minded archeologists and they too were stubborn, especially Abbe Henri Breuil. In 1903, he coaxed the great Cartailhac to visit a cluster of new caves found in southwestern France. The stubborn old expert was there when two new caves were opened. For the first time,, he beheld the astounding murals with his 'own eyes. The villain of the story turned pale, repented, and his stupid error to the world of science. Don Marcelino had died in disgrace, but Cartailhac journeyed to Spain to offer his humble apologies to his daughter, Maria.
LascauX, the masterpiece of the prehistoric art galleries, was left undiscovered until 1940. And once again a dog showed the way. A group of boys were roaming near the Vezere River when their dog went down a crevice. Theyoung spelunkers followed through a passage that opened into the breathtakinn cave of Lascaux. This time the experts paid proper attention to the prehistoric gallery of animal murals.
Monstrous mammoths and herds of horses, reindeer and rhinos, bears, and bison, adorn the walls. The figures are outlined in black and tinted with earthy reds and ochres. The graceful artwork shows them moving and galloping as they did more than 20,000 years ago. But, sad to say, the cave is now closed to the public. Stern authorities decided that steamy visitors and fresh air made the earthy colors fade. And nobody troubled to make a reproduction of the cave where ordinary folk could gaze in wonder at the art of the Ice Age ancestors.