50 Fun Facts About Cave Paintings

Cave paintings belong to which broader category of art, which also includes engravings on cave walls?

The term usually implies a prehistoric origin.

Roughly how many caves containing prehistoric art have been found in France and Spain?

Early dating was contentious because cave debris from many eras contaminates radiocarbon samples.

Besides sampling pigment, what traces left by cave painters' lighting can be dated to establish a painting's age?

Carbonate deposits forming on top of paintings can also give a minimum age.

Which subjects appear most often in prehistoric cave paintings?

Plants account for less than 1% of the symbols depicted in European cave art.

Which pigments did cave painters typically use?

Sometimes the animal's silhouette was incised into the rock before painting.

Curiously, the painters of Lascaux left mainly the bones of which animal, yet never painted it?

Horses are the most common species on the Lascaux walls.

A 2012 study found cave artists depicted what more accurately than modern artists?

Close observation of prey animals mattered for survival.

How were the negative stencils of hands found in caves worldwide made?

Many stencils show a finger wholly or partly missing, for which several explanations have been offered.

Early 20th-century scholars such as Henri Breuil interpreted cave paintings as what?

David Lewis-Williams later argued they were visions painted by shamans in trance.

Dean Snow's study of hand stencils at Pech Merle suggested many were made by whom?

R. Dale Guthrie had argued adolescent males made much of the art, based on hand-print analysis.

A 2022 study by amateur archaeologist Bennett Bacon proposed that dots and lines in cave art recorded what?

A recurring 'Y' symbol was proposed to mean 'to give birth', making the marks a possible proto-writing system.

Who must have made the 64,000-year-old red symbols in Spain's Maltravieso, Ardales and La Pasiega caves?

They predate the arrival of modern humans in Europe by at least 20,000 years.

On which Indonesian island are the Maros-Pangkep cave paintings called the oldest known depiction of storytelling?

The Leang Karampuang scene, 91 by 38 cm, was dated to about 51,200 years in a 2024 Nature paper.

A 2021 discovery at Leang Tedongnge cave, dated to at least 45,500 years, depicts what animal?

It is also the earliest evidence of human settlement in the region, and is deteriorating due to climate change.

The 40,000-year-old figurative painting found in 2018 in Lubang Jeriji Saléh cave is on which island?

It depicts an unknown animal and may be as old as 52,000 years.

The oldest known rock painting, 73,000-year-old ochre lines, was found at which South African site?

The small rock fragment was found in 2011 among spear points and took seven years of testing to confirm.

Which Spanish cave holds Europe's earliest known figurative paintings, dated to at least 40,000 BC?

Before that 2012 study, Chauvet in France was thought to hold the oldest.

Radiocarbon dates show that Chauvet Cave was painted in two periods - roughly when?

Many paintings were modified repeatedly over thousands of years.

Chauvet Cave, discovered in December 1994, lies in which French department?

It is named for Jean-Marie Chauvet, one of three speleologists who first explored it.

Why did Chauvet's paintings survive untouched until 1994?

The clay floor still holds cave-bear paw prints and the hollows where the bears slept.

Lascaux cave lies near the village of Montignac in which French department?

It joined the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979 with the other decorated caves of the Vézère valley.

Who discovered the entrance to Lascaux in September 1940?

He returned with three friends and climbed down a 15-metre shaft they thought led to Lascaux Manor.

Roughly how many figures does Lascaux contain?

They fall into three groups: animals, human figures and abstract signs; over 600 are painted.

What is the most famous chamber of Lascaux, dominated by four black aurochs, called?

One enigmatic animal there, with two straight lines on its forehead, is nicknamed the 'unicorn'.

In which year was the original Lascaux cave closed to the public because its condition was deteriorating?

Lascaux II, a replica of the Hall of the Bulls and Painted Gallery, opened nearby in 1983.

Lascaux IV, a full-scale replica of the entire cave, opened in December 2016 as part of what?

It stands 400 m from the original on the same hill above Montignac.

The Cave of Altamira lies near which town in Cantabria, Spain?

Its earliest paintings date back around 36,000 years.

Who first pointed out the paintings on the Altamira ceiling to Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola in 1879?

The cave itself had been found in 1868 by tiler Modesto Cubillas.

Which French prehistorian, having ridiculed Altamira, published 'Mea culpa d'un sceptique' in 1902?

Sautuola's claims had been loudly mocked at the 1880 Prehistorical Congress in Lisbon.

Altamira's Polychrome Ceiling famously depicts a herd of which extinct animal?

Two horses, a large doe and possibly a wild boar share the ceiling.

Why did academics initially dismiss Altamira as a hoax?

The controversy only ended around 1902 as similar finds piled up across the Franco-Cantabrian region.

Cueva de las Manos, the Cave of the Hands, is in which country?

Its hundreds of stencilled hands were made between 7,300 BC and AD 700 in Santa Cruz province.

At Cueva de las Manos, 829 stencils are of left hands versus 31 of the other - what does this suggest?

The paint was blown through bone pipes, whose remains helped date the art.

How was the pigment applied to make the hand stencils at Cueva de las Manos?

Radiocarbon dating of the pipe remains helped establish the paintings' age.

The entrance to France's Cosquer Cave, near Marseille, is where?

Diver Henri Cosquer found it in 1985; sea levels rose after the Ice Age and drowned the entrance.

Unusually, Cosquer Cave contains depictions of marine animals, including seals and which extinct bird?

Nine seals, three great auks and some jellyfish are among 16 marine animals shown.

The Bhimbetka rock shelters, with India's oldest rock art, are near which city?

The UNESCO site spans seven hills and over 750 shelters, some inhabited more than 100,000 years ago.

Cave paintings at Apollo 11 Cave, dated to around 25,500-27,500 years, are in which African country?

They are among the oldest known art in southern Africa.

Australia's oldest dated cave painting, a 17,300-year-old Kimberley kangaroo, was dated how?

Ochre is inorganic, so the paint itself cannot be carbon-dated.

A red ochre painting on the Arnhem Land plateau may depict which extinct giant bird?

If correct it could mean the bird survived later than the 40,000-year extinction date, though the evidence is inconclusive.

Kapova Cave, in Bashkortostan, Russia, was the first cave painting site publicised outside which region?

The Ignatievka Cave in the Urals, with a mammoth image, may be the northernmost Paleolithic painting site.

The Magdalenian cave-art style died out around 10,000 BC, at the start of which period?

The later rock art of the Iberian Mediterranean Basin favoured crowds of small human figures in open shelters.

Coliboaia Cave art, about 32,000 years old and compared with Chauvet, was found in which country?

It is among the few Chauvet-era sites outside France and Spain.

Which English site, found this century, has 14,500-year-old etchings but no paintings?

It lies in Nottinghamshire, at the northern edge of Ice Age habitation.

Padah-Lin Caves, containing 11,000-year-old paintings and many stone tools, are in which country?

Khoit Tsenkher Cave in Mongolia has similar Paleolithic-style animals unlike anything else in that country.

The Tassili n'Ajjer rock art, first found in 1933, lies in the mountains of which country?

The UNESCO site holds some 15,000 engravings and drawings recording Saharan life from 6000 BC onward.

The Laas Geel cave paintings, discovered in 2002 near Hargeisa, are in which territory?

The 5,000-year-old paintings show wild animals, decorated cows and the herders thought to have made them.

Serra da Capivara National Park, rich in prehistoric paintings, is in which Brazilian state?

Its best-known site is Pedra Furada, and the park became a World Heritage Site in 1991.

Ignatievka Cave, thought to be the northernmost Paleolithic painting site, is in which mountains?

It holds an image of a mammoth and about 160 other paintings, though its dating is disputed.

Which Bulgarian cave holds paintings dated to about 10,000 years ago?

Norway's Solsem cave, at about 3,000 years old, is among the youngest sites in the same list.