Chauvet Cave

About

The Chauvet Cave, a cave adorned with the Pont d'Arc, the Chauvet-Pont d'Arc Cave, is an adorned cave dating from the Paleolithic region of Vallon-Pont-d'Arc (south of the Ardèche, France). Discovered in 1994, it was first named cave adorned with the Combe d'Arc (named after the place where it is located) but today bears the name of one of its inventors Jean-Marie Chauvet. It is part of a set of adorned caves attributed to the Upper Paleolithic which loom along the gorges of the Ardèche and include the Chabot Cave, the Figuier Cave, the Deux-Ouvertures Cave, the Aiguèze Cave and the Lion's Head Cave.

The site includes a thousand paintings and engravings, including 447 representations of animals of fourteen different species. Several direct dates by carbon 14 method on charcoals, uranium-thorium dating on calcite floors, thermoluminescence of traces of fire on walls or cosmogenic dating by 36Cl at the porch gave consistent results that indicated that the cave had experienced two phases of occupation, one at the Aurignacian (37...