Horses at Chauvet Cave - Oldest Human Art! 18x24 on Canvas

The Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave in the Ardèche department of southern France is a cave that contains some of the best-preserved figurative cave paintings in the world,^[1] as well as other evidence of Upper Paleolithic life.^[2] It is located near the commune of Vallon-Pont-d'Arc on a limestone cliff above the former bed of the Ardèche River, in the Gorges de l'Ardèche.

Discovered on December 18, 1994, it is considered one of the most significant prehistoric art sites and the UN’s cultural agency UNESCO granted it World Heritage status on June 22, 2014.^[3] The cave was first explored by a group of three speleologists: Eliette Brunel-Deschamps, Christian Hillaire, and Jean-Marie Chauvet for whom it was named six months after an aperture now known as "Le Trou de Baba" was discovered by Michel Rosa (Baba).^[4] At a later date the group returned to the cave. Another member of this group, Michel Chabaud, along with two others, travelled further into the cave and discovered the Gallery of the Lions, the End Chamber. In doing so they became the first people in 30000 years to cast eyes on these paintings. Chauvet has his own detailed account of the discovery.^[5] In addition to the paintings and other human evidence, they also discovered fossilizedremains, prints, and markings from a variety of animals, some of which are now extinct.