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is one of the latest and most brilliant sensations, not only in archaeology,
but in human culture in general. It is located in the steep side of a cliff in
the gorges of the Ardeche, a tributary of the Rhone river. One of the famous
in France natural sights, Pont d'Arc, is situated not far from the cave. Pont
d'Arc is a huge arc, cut through a rock by the waters of the Ardeche, which
forms a gigantic single-span bridge, 60 ms high.
 The
cave was discovered on the 18th of December 1994 by three speleologists -
Jean-Marie Chauvet, Eliette Brunel Deschamps and Christian Hillaire.
They had already been experienced in exploration caves; several of them had
the traces of a pre-historic man's stay. They had seen the half-covered
entrance into an unnamed cave before but it seemed to be of a secondary
interest and was not explored. That day when Eliette wriggled into the
narrow duck, she saw a big cave about 10 metres below her - the speleologists
were certainly above a big gallery! They understood that they must return to
the van for the necessary equipment. It was already evening and they even
thought of putting the exploration off but still they took a ladder, came
back into the cave and climbed down into a wide passage. They moved some
dozens metres in the gallery and saw traces of red ochre and a depiction of a
mammoth and other beasts - a new monument of palaeolithic paintings was before
them!
A complete
study of the cave will take several decades. There is a succession of four
big "vestibules" with about or more than 300 paintings. They are in a
remarkable state of preservation. At present the paintings are the oldest
known on the Earth (about 32 millenia). Even the first investigations shook
the established notions concerning the art of the Upper Palaeolithic period
and pushed its beginning almost 5 millenia to the back. Chauvet cave is
described in many scientific articles, not mentioning sensational materials in
mass media, a large artistic album is published and translated into the main
european languages.
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