In the fall of 1940, a group of boys exploring the outdoors in the Dordogne area of southwest France came upon the entrance to a cave–and unwittingly discovered a treasure trove of prehistoric art. The walls of the cave now known as ‘Lascaux’ are covered with hundreds of images–giant drawings of bulls, horses, and humans–created some 17,000 years ago, in the Upper Paleolithic Period. The cave was opened to the public in 1948, but after several years, scientists observed that the artwork was being damaged by carbon dioxide, heat, humidity, and other contaminants produced by an average of 1,200 visitors who explored the caves each day. To protect the prehistoric masterpieces, the cave has been closed to the public since 1963. Today, the closest you can get is viewing full-scale replicas at the International Centre for Cave Art in nearby Montignac, where our homepage image was photographed.
Venture into a prehistoric gallery of art
Today in History
More Desktop Wallpapers:
-
Celebrating 30 years of eye-opening images
-
Wildebeest on the move
-
In celebration of cats
-
A city, a cliff, a canyon…and cheese
-
New Year s Eve
-
New Year’s Day in the land of the rising sun
-
Remembering Krakatoa
-
A field of English lavender
-
Autumn’s swan song
-
Spread some love with Bing
-
Castle Square, Old Town, Warsaw, Poland
-
Irohazaka road
-
Celebrating sea otters
-
Atlanta Botanical Garden
-
How lovely are your branches
-
Welcome to the drainpipe of the Pacific
-
Mid-Autumn Festival
-
St. Patricks Day in County Waterford, Ireland
-
Sharp-dressed bug
-
Schönbrunn Palace Park, Vienna, Austria
-
Installation art turns heads
-
‘Hello’ from zero degrees longitude
-
Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and the Louvre Pyramid
-
Whangārei Falls in New Zealand
-
Summer winds down in the Southern Hemisphere
-
Art and soul
-
Indigo bunting
-
Defying gravity on a swing ride
-
Dancing in The Nutcracker
-
The Great Glen