Lascaux Cave
Lascaux is a cave in France with cave paintings about 20,000 years ago. Sometimes the cave is called the "Sistine Chapel of primitive painting", since a huge number of engraving and images have perfectly been preserved here. In 1979, the cave, along with the historical sites of the Weser River, fell under the protection of UNESCO.
Lasco Cave was first opened by children on September 12, 1940, who noticed a gap in grief after the fall of the tree. The children told the teacher about this, and after 2 weeks the cave began to be investigated by Henri Braille, a specialist in primitive society, hiding in this region from German occupiers. Henri carefully examined that the drawings are genuine. Soon he left for Spain, then for Portugal and South Africa, and Henry returned home only in 1949. At this time, he began with his friends a new stage of excavation of the cave and hoped to find the burial sites of ancient people, but instead he unearthed even more drawings. By 1963, a group of researchers had an inventory and counted 1,433 drawings in the territory of more than 100 m2. Today, about 1900 drawings are read.
In 1948, visitors were decided to enter the cave, for this they connected the cave to the power grid, carried out earthworks, and built a staircase. The entrance was closed with a huge bronze door. After 7 years, they noticed damage to cave paintings. Soon they found out that the reason for this was exhaled carbon dioxide and water vapor, which reacted with salt, which protected the image like varnish. The resulting calcium hydrocarbonate corroded the drawings. For this reason, in 1957, a system was installed in the Lasco cave that restored the desired humidity and temperature. It helped, however, for a short while. The number of tourists reached a thousand people a day, which is why researchers had to excavate at night. In 1960, the established environment became favorable for the development of algae on the walls of the cave, and even ozone air purification did not help. And then the French Minister of Culture in 1963 forbade the launch of tourists into the cave. In order not to upset tourists, they built the cave of Lasco II, in which drawings from the original were recreated.
For 15 years, tourists have severely damaged the special microclimate of the cave, which has been preserved for millennia. The consequences are still eliminated - specialized teams cleanse the walls of the cave from algae, fungi and other parasites that harm the rocky drawings every 2 weeks.
Lasco is a small cave: the total length is about 250 meters, and the average height is about 30 meters. Researchers divided the cave into several halls: bull hall ( it is a rotunda ), axial passage, nave, passage, apse, cat laziness, well.
The bull hall is the most beautiful in the cave, since here you can see drawings with teeth up to 5 meters in length. On the cave on both sides run 2 rows with teeth, which are found with horses, deer and a "unicorn". In the axial passage, bulls with horses are surrounded by deer and rams. To apply some images, it was necessary to build forests, since they are made at a multi-meter height and at the ceiling. It’s problematic to get into cat's lazas, but it is there that the oldest and most primitive cave paintings of animals of the cat family are located. The apse has the most images of animals, symbols, geometric shapes.
The cave still does not cease to amaze with its findings, and the drawings often carry a hidden meaning. For example, scientists believe that the eyes of some animals form constellations, and some scenes in the Lasco cave carry a mythical connotation.
