Chauvet Cave

The cave paintings and rock art of Chauvet

The Chauvet Cave is located near the Vallon-Pont-d'Arc in the Ardèche region of southern France. The Cave Paintings of Chauvet date to 30,000 to 32,000 years ago. In the Chauvet Cave hundreds of animal paintings have been found making Chauvet Cave one of the world's most important rock art sites.

Chauvet Cave Through the Eyes of a Sculptor

Visit to the Chauvet Cave in 1999 by John Robinson

Jean arrived beside me and we set off back down the plastic path towards the Horses. Knowing what was coming I started to look ahead as we passed the cave-in and the Owl. Soon I could make out the dark forbidding portal of the Sorcerer’s chamber. The entrance to the Holy of Holies could not be more impressive if it had been built by man. Looking up from the calcite floor, situated right in the middle of the end wall of the cavern, is a great black hole.

We stepped up onto the grey clay floor and followed the plastic path into the jaws of the tunnel. To the left was the Rhinoceros with the black belt; while to the right was the red line drawing of the extinct Megaceros. They appeared to be the guardians of the sanctuary, like the spitting Cobras of Egyptian tombs. The floor continued to rise for a few yards, and then suddenly started to fall away, and I found myself looking down the dark throat of a narrowing tunnel into a black void. My helmet light was lost in the depth of the almost straight passageway to the Underworld.

Walking forward we came to a 3 foot drop, and then another steeper one, where we had to sit and slip down on our rumps, before arriving on to the floor of a large and long chamber.

Jean turned me around to look at the left-hand wall. Great Lions fill a panel, two black and one red, superimposed on each other. They were staring into the dark cave ahead of us. We moved slowly forward and then suddenly there was the Pride of Lions. They are majestically magnificent. The intensity of the gaze of the animals staring straight back at us said only one thing, “All those who enter here, Beware”. They were ready to spring, daring us to approach the Inner Sanctum. I was quite speechless.

	I took out my binoculars and studied the Sorcerer. The lens intensified the light and made the figure leap into life. I was in the presence of a Deity living on Earth. He radiated a ferocious pagan power. I could not keep thinking that surely I was looking at the original source of the Greek legend of the Cretan Minotaur. How did the artist reach the rock cone to do this painting? Certainly some kind of scaffolding must have been used. The same thing applies to the Lion and Rhinoceros panels as some of the paintings extend so far up the wall, they are well out of reach of a six foot high man.

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