Chauvet cave dating

They left behind drawings of fish (photo, right), turtles, possums, and wallabies, but few images have been dated.Geologist Bruno David noted, “We don’t have the dated art itself, but we’ve found the tools that were used to make the art.In one corner of the cave, overlapping symbols and animals painted on the ceiling and wall include lions, elephants, sheep, ibexes, ostriches, and antelopes, camels.Often, the animals’ horns, humps, and necks are exaggerated, just as they are in the more well-known cave art of Lascaux, roughly its contemporary.

This adds more evidence to the argument that art came before modern humans.Instead, it shares many themes with other cave art sites around the world and fits easily into the world cave art collection.Consider these examples: Maros Cave, Sulawesi Island, Indonesia Currently, cave art found in Sulawesi Island, Indonesia has been dated to over 40,000 years old.Next to that print is a drawing of a pig, found to be 35,400 years old.Interestingly, scholars have known about these drawings since the 1950’s, but the images were dismissed as being no more than 12,000 years old because that was the date they had assigned to human migration to the island. A stenciled hand print is visible below the pig’s shoulder.