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Hidden in the gorges of Southern France

lies one of the most stunning decorated caves ever discovered.

GILLES TOSELLO It's the most beautiful cave in the world.

It ticks every single box.

The Sistine Chapel of Paleolithic art.

A natural wonder

visited by animals for thousands of years.

Until eventually, people arrived,

some of them covering its walls

with drawings of exceptional beauty.

Since its rediscovery in 1994,

only a limited number of scientists

have been granted access.

STÉPHANE JAILLET When you see such a sparkling

and well-preserved cave,

you feel like the first person in it.

CATHERINE FERRIER It was an amazing opportunity,

an unforgettable moment that I'll cherish forever.

I never imagined I would take part

in such an adventure.

Now scientists are returning to the cave

to search for new clues...

Those are blown dots.

...about the people who came here

and what moved them to create these haunting images.

It totally changed my way of thinking.

"Stone Age Masterpiece," right now,

on "NOVA."

In Southern France,

nestled between mountains to the east and west,

lie the Gorges of the Ardèche,

riddled with around 1,500 limestone caves.

Among them one remarkable site.

Since its rediscovery in 1994,

its location has remained a carefully guarded secret.

But it is there, somewhere, 650 feet high,

accessible only by a narrow wooden footbridge.

The cave is closely monitored by surveillance cameras

and secured by a biometric fingerprint

identification system.

Here, a steel door, 15 inches thick and airtight,

protects the treasure from the elements.

The French government controls access

to this heavily secured archaeological site.

The general public is not allowed inside.

This is the Chauvet Cave.

Its walls are decorated

with some of the oldest and best-preserved

Stone Age art in the world.

So fragile that even breathing on the paintings

could damage them.

Now, for the first time,

France is allowing a film crew

to bring half a ton of specialized equipment

into the cave

to photograph the site in precise detail,

creating a valuable archive

for people to study and learn from

in the years to come.

The images will preserve the discoveries

made by three intrepid cave explorers

when they were first investigating

the caves of the Ardèche

in December 1994.

ÉLIETTE BRUNEL

BRUNEL and JEAN-MARIE CHAUVET:

During that time, Éliette Brunel,

Christian Hillaire, and Jean-Marie Chauvet

followed a flow of air coming through cracks in the rock,

which indicated a cavity behind the wall.

Éliette squeezed through a tiny passage,

followed closely by the others.

What they saw astonished them.

Ooh!

They'd just entered an extremely large open space.

Suddenly, Éliette said, "They were here."

On the walls were clear signs of the Stone Age people

who roamed the area tens of thousands of years ago.

The explorers had found one of the most beautiful

decorated caves in the world.

The next day,

they contacted Bernard Gély, the researcher in charge

of the decorated caves of the Ardèche.

GÉLY The first time

I heard of the Chauvet Cave

was on the phone.

Éliette, whom I call Lily,

and Jean-Marie Chauvet

called me to say they'd made an important discovery.

I could really sense the emotion in their voices.

They named the cave after Jean-Marie Chauvet,

because he had been the first to insist on exploring it.

A few days later, its authentication was organized

with the ministry's official specialist,

Jean Clottes.

CLOTTES

GÉLY We were very professional.

The whole point of this process is to verify its authenticity.

That's the first objective.

And we were convinced just 30 to 60 feet in!

CLOTTES

GÉLY:

GÉLY It was obviously very emotional.

I think we all cried at one point,

or at least shed a few tears.

We were all truly fascinated, there's no other way to put it.

CLOTTES

Three months after this discovery,

the first dating results come in, and they are astounding.

Multiple radiocarbon dates obtained from charcoal

indicate that the drawings are over 37,000 years old,

almost twice as old as those in Lascaux,

another French cave,

making Chauvet one of the oldest among the hundreds

of decorated prehistoric caves

so far discovered around the world.

Then, in 1998,

the first research expedition begins.

Carole Fritz,

who is named director of the scientific team in 2018,

is part of that mission.

FRITZ The team put together by Jean Clottes

was the first interdisciplinary team,

meaning he hired people from different fields

to work together.

Some of the people on the team were geoscientists.

Others were climatologists.

Some were specialized in chronological dating.

And of course, there were archaeologists

and prehistorians, including specialists in cave art.

That was the great strength of the Chauvet team,

and it was unheard of in France and in Europe.

The team consists of 15 scientists.

After setting up a staging area, they finally head inside.

The original Stone Age opening had been sealed by a rock fall

more than 20,000 years ago,

forcing the researchers to squeeze

through a safe, reinforced passageway.

But even inside the larger cave,

their freedom of movement is limited,

as their very presence poses a threat to the art.

FERRIER We can't work in Chauvet like on other sites,

so, as we say, we work in a non-harmful way,

meaning that we can't go everywhere

and can't go near

some of the elements we want to study.

MAN

Still, the opportunity to be even this close is precious.

They work together with the same goal:

to uncover the complete history of the cave,

all the way back to its geological origin.

To a time when the Gorges of the Ardèche didn't exist.

120 million years ago,

the landscape was obviously totally different

from the one we know today.

It looked more like a lagoon or a seashore,

with a giant coral reef.

It was sort of like the Great Barrier Reef

in Australia.

Layers and layers of limestone

accumulated there over millions of years.

Over time, as billions of marine organisms decomposed,

they formed a layer of sediment at the bottom of the lagoon.

This layer became

an underwater mountain range of limestone

1,000 feet high.

Eventually, tectonic forces deep in the Earth

pushed the rock upward.

JAILLET Once the limestone massif formed under water,

it rose under the effect

of tectonic forces.

This is how mountains rise.

Everything rose that way.

So the limestone which was under water therefore

appeared above water level.

Water rushed down through the rocky plateau,

carving out the bed of what is now the Ardèche River.

But another tectonic shift brought more changes.

JAILLET A peculiar event occurred

about six million years ago,

as the Strait of Gibraltar closed.

The closure of the strait caused the Mediterranean to evaporate.

The sea level lowered by 6,000 to 10,000 feet.

As the Mediterranean dried up,

all the rivers that flowed towards it

plunged straight into it.

As the rivers flowed down into the sea,

they shaped the landscape.

In the Ardèche, they carved a deep canyon.

600,000 years later,

the Strait of Gibraltar opened up again.

The Atlantic Ocean flowed back and flooded the valleys,

forming the landscape that surrounds Chauvet Cave.

JAILLET The Gorges of the Ardèche

are an exceptional geomorphological element.

It's a gorge, a canyon.

It's as if a 19-mile-long and thousand-foot-deep saw

had cut through the limestone massif.

Over millions of years, rain lashed the Gorges.

The slightly acidic water

reacted with the calcium in the limestone cliffs,

eroding them.

It seeped through fractures in the rock, drop after drop,

widening the cracks,

creating a network of tunnels, galleries,

and underground rivers--

what geologists call a karst.

This process slowly carved the region's caves,

including Chauvet.

Until finally, around two million years ago,

the water retreated.

JAILLET This underground space then underwent

other transformations: some blocks fell,

concretions grew, calcites formed,

and erosion increased the volume of the chambers.

The original space was totally disrupted

by different phenomena.

The size of the Chauvet Cave is truly impressive.

91,000 square feet,

divided into about 20 chambers and galleries,

some almost 60 feet high.

Geological surveys suggest

the original cave entrance was monumental.

Around 30 feet high and 50 feet wide,

it was likely similar to the opening of this nearby cave,

an inviting refuge that overlooked the landscape.

But who were those first people to explore this place?

Researchers began looking for clues,

especially on the floor of the cave,

where bones lay scattered.

I like comparing this to forensic science.

Of course, there's no crime involved here,

but we need to find all the elements

which could indicate some sort of human or animal behavior.

Every single trace.

But of the more than 4,000 bones recovered,

there were no human remains.

So what kinds of animals did they belong to?

And why so many?

Paleontologist Philippe Fosse has been part

of the scientific mission since 2000.

FOSSE A large variety of species have been identified,

such as ibex,

wolves, horses, leopards, wildcats,

foxes.

Since no evidence of flint

being used on the bones was found,

these animals were not remains

of game brought into the cave by humans.

These are therefore paleontological vestiges,

evidence of the cave's natural occupation.

Over thousands of years,

animals moved in and out of the mouth of the cave.

And many died there.

But as scientists probed deeper, they saw a change.

The farther in they went,

the fewer the species of animal remains,

until only one was left.

The cave bear.

This now-extinct species made its home here

for thousands of years.

FOSSE Cave bears were extremely robust animals.

They were as big as today's largest brown bears,

such as North American grizzlies or Kodiak bears.

These bears could weigh 900 to 1,100 pounds

and stand about 3.9 to 4.3 feet at the withers.

So this species was very different

and much stronger than the European brown bears

we know today.

When the bears arrived in Chauvet Cave 48,000 years ago,

only the first few yards of the entrance

were illuminated by daylight.

But bear remains have been found

almost 700 feet deep into the cave.

So how was this giant able to navigate in complete darkness?

These bears moved along

by keeping close to the walls.

They managed to adapt to the darkness.

This explains why the bottom of the walls are abraded

and the limestone is smooth and shiny.

So even though these bears were totally blind

in the darkness of these caves,

they managed to occupy even the deepest chambers and galleries.

But what drew the bears here in the first place?

These clay banks are covered with cave bear tracks.

These were routes which led to this area

riddled with small hollows.

These were in fact bear wallows, in which they hibernated.

It's thought these bears could survive

more than six months without eating.

And this cave was so deep,

it provided great protection from predators.

For thousands of years,

bears were the dominant visitors to the cave--

until about 37,000 years ago, when everything changed.

A new creature entered the cave:

one that was daring and driven by curiosity.

Homo sapiens.

And in Chauvet Cave, they left their mark.

The main people are those who came to do the drawings.

The Aurignacians, to name them,

left Africa and gradually spread across the planet.

They arrived in France

about 35,000 years ago,

maybe even before.

They are our direct ancestors.

They physically looked like us.

They were the same size,

and their body was more or less the same shape.

The only thing we know for sure

is that there weren't many of them.

They traveled in small groups, perhaps like families.

These dark-skinned humans roamed Europe's plains and valleys.

They moved according to the seasons.

When they reached the Gorges of the Ardèche,

it might have seemed like paradise,

with its hundreds of shelters,

flowing water, and abundant wildlife.

But of the hundreds of caves in the area,

why did they choose to create such elaborate artworks

in Chauvet?

JAILLET Geographically speaking,

the Chauvet Cave is located upstream

from the Gorges of the Ardèche.

It features a prominent landscape element

which is extremely important: a natural arch

called the Pont d'Arc.

The Pont d'Arc formed around 120,000 years ago,

long before the first Homo sapiens arrived.

It is a landmark in the Gorges.

When they entered the Gorges

and reached the Pont d'Arc,

they could see the entrance of the cave.

I think that's what attracted the people in the first place.

They must have noticed this peculiar feature, this entrance,

which was probably clearly visible from below.

The cave was visible from afar.

A few hundred yards from the Pont d'Arc, a ledge,

a natural path carved into the cliff,

guided these people toward the entrance.

Evidence suggests that the Aurignacians

did not live in the depths of the caves,

which were cold, dark, and damp.

However, they likely took shelter in them

and made fires in the entrances,

gathering around them to warm up,

to cook their food,

and probably to tell each other stories.

These fires also protected them from wild animals.

Equipped with torches, these humans could venture

into the dark and mysterious depths of Chauvet Cave.

FRITZ When they first entered a cave,

they had no idea what they were going to find in it.

I am convinced that they explored the place

before drawing in it.

The underground world is not made for us.

Our species isn't equipped to move around in it.

But some animals are, like bats, bears, or invertebrates.

If we don't have a source of light to help us,

like a torch,

we cannot explore the underground world.

Catherine Ferrier and Jean-Claude Leblanc

were part of the Chauvet research team until 2024.

They've recreated a torch,

the tool that allowed Stone Age people

to move around in total darkness.

When Aurignacians went inside the cave,

they didn't go in with only one torch.

They had to take several,

to last the time they estimated

they would spend inside the cave.

FERRIER Remains of torches from the Upper Paleolithic

were found inside.

The parts that were found were the ends of the torches.

Based on these archaeological elements,

we know that the torches we made are quite similar to theirs.

Since this experiment cannot be conducted in Chauvet,

the two scientists use an ancient limestone quarry

with similar characteristics.

LEBLANC Now, this is a typical exploration torch, isn't it?

FERRIER Yeah.

A one-pound torch will produce about 40 minutes of light,

which is quite a lot.

So with two torches, that's 40 minutes times two.

Since they are quite lightweight,

they can easily be carried around

to explore the underground safely.

When we walk fast, it brings some air.

LEBLANC Yeah, it brings oxygen, uh-huh, yeah.

I'm going to wipe it.

We can see that it leaves charcoal marks on the rock.

We call these torch wipes.

The charcoal falls to the ground

and it renews the flame.

The two scientists found dozens of traces

of torch wipes in Chauvet.

Like the Stone Age explorers,

each member of the scientific team

experienced their own first journey into the cave.

When I entered the Chauvet Cave for the first time,

I was very intimidated.

Before going in, you equip yourself with lamps

and go down a 33-foot-high ladder.

Once you're in, you wonder where you are.

Then, behind the draperies of calcite

which cover up the walls,

you can distinguish red marks.

So, yes, it's very intimidating.

The first paintings are in the entrance chamber,

named after Éliette Brunel, one of the discoverers.

Geometric signs and drawings

on the smooth areas of the walls.

The predominant color here is red.

These paintings were the first discovered

and raised many questions.

Like how were they made, and why?

When we visit the cave,

we get the impression

that there are many red figures

or symbols in the first part,

and fewer and fewer

as we go deeper into it.

Don't get fooled by this,

because this is actually a color.

Since they joined the research team in 1998,

Carole Fritz

and cave art specialist and artist Gilles Tosello

have analyzed the artistic techniques

of the humans who decorated the cave.

TOSELLO The reds come from hematite.

Hematite is what we commonly call red ocher.

It needs to be grinded for hours to be turned into powder.

It also requires binders.

Nevertheless, it can easily be found

in the bed of the Ardèche

and in the Gorges everywhere.

The Stone Age artists used that red

to draw symbols and animals and to leave handprints.

Sometimes, they put the red ocher in their mouths

and blew it onto the rock.

TOSELLO Those are blown dots.

We can see that the color is denser here.

That's the point of impact,

and there are the spatters all around.

It's as if they'd used an airbrush on the wall.

It's the same technique for the hands.

Deeper into the cave,

the color and style of the paintings change.

TOSELLO This change of color

is pretty significant.

And it comes with a change of theme.

There are more figurative shapes of animals.

So it's quite different.

After a narrow passage and another room

comes a roughly circular space 100 feet across.

This is the Hillaire Chamber,

named after another discoverer.

The predominant color here is black

and the artwork is more elaborate and varied.

Right at the entrance is a 20-foot mural

that was created not by applying color,

but by removing the soft, dark outer layer of clay,

revealing the bright white rock below.

Sometimes we feel that they've just left,

like they're just right behind us.

We turn around and we check if they're there,

but no, they aren't.

They drew horses, mammoths, and ibexes,

often in one stroke, using a finger or a stick.

One figure stands out.

It's an owl,

the oldest known depiction of the animal in cave art.

On the other side of the chamber

is a 36-foot-long monumental painting.

It's one of the most important works found in the cave.

This masterpiece is the Panel of the Horses.

Here are lions, reindeer, deer, aurochs,

woolly rhinoceroses, and mammoths drawn in charcoal.

It seems to have been carefully planned,

making it one of the earliest major compositions

in the history of art.

FRITZ To me, this structure is absolutely amazing.

And I really love horses, so, yes.

That work is really special to me.

Gilles Tosello has mastered the cave artists' strokes.

TOSELLO These curves made with charcoal are extremely well done,

with a lot of technique and skill.

And very often, they were made in one

or perhaps a few strokes.

So it didn't take a long time to do them.

In 2012, the French government

began construction of a monumental replica

of the cave, known as Chauvet 2.

Tosello took on the job of recreating

two of the largest murals

using all the techniques of the original artists.

You start by scraping off the clay.

Then, you can draw with charcoal.

Since there's no more clay, the wall is white.

That way, you can draw it in black

and it will stand out nicely on the white background.

They had obviously noticed and understood that.

But they also used the clay on the wall

to add details to their work.

For example here-- there's clay on the lion's head.

That means the artist didn't get rid of all of it.

So they didn't clean all the walls every time.

That's why I believe it's part of their artistic approach.

What seemed at first like a constraint

became a source of inspiration.

They experimented with it.

The scientific survey

revealed over 1,000 works of art,

many of them depicting prehistoric animals.

FRITZ The animals drawn in the Chauvet Cave

are characteristic of the Paleolithic wildlife.

The three main animals found there are big cats,

rhinoceroses, and mammoths.

There are no hunting scenes.

No humans are depicted killing animals.

There are no scenes of everyday life

and no landscapes, either.

Over 430 individual animals

of 14 different species

appear on the walls-- many more than the handful

of human figures depicted in the cave.

FRITZ In the Paleolithic era,

when people stepped out of their tents,

they probably encountered animals

more often than other humans.

Paleolithic artists had a lot of knowledge

on the animals that they painted.

So obviously, 40,000 years ago,

these artists rendered a lot of information

on their behavior

and, more generally, on the world they lived in.

These animal depictions provided paleontologists

with crucial information

about the appearance and behavior

of many prehistoric species,

sometimes overturning older preconceptions.

Before the discovery of Chauvet,

cave lions were only known by their fossils

and other rare prehistoric art,

where the sex of the animals was unclear.

FOSSE The drawings in Chauvet

confirmed that male lions did not have manes.

The Chauvet paintings hold a treasure trove of information

for scientists today,

but what did they mean to the people who made them?

Catherine Ferrier and Jean-Claude Leblanc

spotted dark marks on the walls--

traces of large fires.

These marks intrigued the two researchers.

Why were such large fires lit there?

Were they simply dispelling the darkness?

Or did they have a deeper purpose?

The marks we found on the walls

indicate that very big fires were lit there.

But what kind of fires were they?

What type of fire produces marks of this color

and splits the rock that way?

We understood right away that these were not

the usual types of fire found on prehistoric sites.

We realized that those were the traces of blazes

that burned the Chauvet Cave.

This discovery really unsettled us.

We had never seen anything like it in other caves.

What were these fires?

What on earth were they playing at in this cave?

It's really extraordinary.

Looking for answers,

the researchers recreated these fires

in a quarry outfitted with temperature sensors.

LEBLANC We are in a quarry which is the same size

as the Megaloceros Gallery.

Our goal here is to recreate a fire

the way the Aurignacians would have lit it.

To do so, we have a thermocouple tree

made of tiny probes.

You can see them here.

Cables connect these thermocouples

to a data acquisition module on the outside,

allowing continuous temperature monitoring.

Through this experiment,

we wanted to show what the Aurignacians were able to do

when they made such big fires.

We especially wanted to see

if it was possible for them

to stay near these fires and to feed them.

FABIEN SALMON This is a digital model

of the result of the experiment.

This is the quarry where the fires were lit.

We notice that there are two separate layers:

one cold layer on the bottom part

and a hot layer on the top.

It is possible to stay in the cold layer by crouching.

However, no one can stay standing,

because the temperature rises

to several hundred degrees in the top part.

FERRIER So these fires were not meant for people to stay near them.

They weren't the typical domestic fires,

around which they used to gather to warm up

and to do activities of everyday life.

The fires next to which they would eat,

shape flints, make different objects

for everyday life.

That's not what they did with these fires.

So it obviously made us wonder what their purpose was.

This question has intrigued researchers for years.

Were these giant fires made

to illuminate the artistic creations?

Were they used for rites or ceremonies?

These decorated caves

had strong symbolic value.

Did these fires add

to the symbolic value of these sites?

And how?

Perhaps the light and the smoke

produced by these fires

were used to highlight the reliefs

and the volume of the cavities

when viewed from a distance.

FRITZ We must view this cave like a theater stage.

Different stories are told as we progress through it,

from one wall to the next

and one chamber to the next.

That is the Chauvet Cave.

One of the most mysterious features in the cave

is an isolated chamber

with no modern walkways to explore it.

This image was created

by digitally scanning the hard-to-access room,

allowing researchers to study its contents--

including the skull of a cave bear,

found resting on a limestone block

in the center of the chamber.

It looks like it was placed there intentionally.

But why?

This question has fascinated scientists for decades.

TOSELLO The Skull Chamber is quite particular,

because it has a theatrical feel to it,

with its clay benches on the sides.

It could have been named the Theater

or Amphitheater Chamber.

The bear is part of this symbolic world.

The skull on this block is the only evidence we have

in all of the caves we've discovered in Europe

that Upper Paleolithic humans

had some sort of respect for these bears.

These humans knew they were entering the bears' home.

What we have here in the Chauvet Cave

are walls decorated and painted

in the exact same place

where the bears came to hibernate.

We can't know exactly what this space meant

to the humans here,

but we do know that both bears and humans

ventured deeper into the cave.

The most remote chamber,

more than 650 feet from the entrance,

contains the greatest evidence of bear activity.

This is also where the men and women of Chauvet

painted another masterpiece.

FRITZ You go down another level

and you arrive in the End Chamber.

That is where the magic happens.

You're attracted by what's at the far end of it.

Even if you can't really see very well,

you can make out black shapes on the walls.

The climax happens at the far end.

I'll use a musical metaphor

by saying that it's a symphony

which starts moderato and ends allegro.

FRITZ You can never get used to seeing that.

You always feel something.

You're drawn to it.

At least, I'm drawn to these images.

I can spend hours looking at them.

To me, it's like looking at a painting by Raphael

or Leonardo da Vinci.

It's exactly the same to me.

Over 32 feet long,

the Great Lion Panel reveals

the artists' creativity and technical mastery.

Prehistorian Marc Azéma

was on the scientific team for 16 years

and studied this spectacular mural.

He has his own interpretation of the work,

experiencing it here in total immersion

on a big screen.

AZÉMA Every time I entered this chamber,

I was overwhelmed with emotions.

I really felt that the Aurignacian artists

were trying to tell us a story.

The compositions in the End Chamber

are clearly staged.

Charcoal was found on the ground.

This means that fires were lit to highlight

the graphic stories which were told.

But what is exceptional here is the presence of animals

represented with many legs

or several heads.

This was probably a way for them

to break down the animal's movement

into several images.

This is an extremely modern process.

One could almost say that cinema originated in Chauvet.

This first scene shows a cave lion

doing something particular which refers to its life cycle.

Inside, there's a female lion.

We can see her rubbing her head with her two ears back

against the male's flank.

Then we walk past rhinoceroses

and other animals of those times.

And we come across more cave lions.

This is the famous Lion Panel,

which depicts a horde of about 15 lions

chasing bison, who are depicted running

with their heads forward.

What's interesting here

is that these cave lions are rushing.

We can clearly see their progression

thanks to the animation of the heads and legs,

which are stretched forward.

Their mouths are half-open

and then warp as if they were roaring.

After the general scene depicted in the Lion Panel,

we get the impression that the artists

try to focus on a more dramatic moment.

We can clearly see two aggressive lions

with their ears back and their mouths half-opened

as if they were roaring.

It's a very violent scene,

with this small, isolated bison shown on top

trying to push them away with its foreleg.

The dramatic emphasis made here

is like a closeup in an animal documentary

taking place before our eyes.

This animal scene ends in violence.

The cave lions slaughter the bison,

and the attack unfolds across the wall.

AZÉMA Here, we can see a big cave lion with a bison.

So, a predator and its prey.

The lion seems to be pulling the bison's horn,

probably to suffocate it,

as we can see nowadays,

when African lions attack buffaloes.

This killing marks the end of the hunting scene.

The cave lion plays a major part

in this great composition.

This is emphasized by the presence of that animal

on the pendant facing the large panel.

The lion is drawn with its prey

and a vulva, which symbolizes birth and creation.

So, there's a predator and its prey,

and we see the animal eat,

which depicts survival.

This is perhaps the symbol of the cycle of life.

This vulva is the most obvious

female representation in the cave.

TOSELLO The presence of this woman

shows that those aren't lions which are depicted here,

but are in fact humans,

for the humans are the hunters.

They are the ones who kill,

because they have no other choice.

They need to kill to survive.

So in a way, the scene in the End Chamber

describes an eternal cycle of life

by associating death and birth.

The works in Chauvet

seem to invite the observer to read between the lines,

to search for symbols and meanings

that reveal their authors' vision of the world.

FRITZ A story is told in Chauvet.

We think that is what we call a myth.

Every society needs myths.

There are no societies of nomad hunter-gatherers

without myths, especially origin myths.

Everyone needs to know where they're from.

These societies have passed on those myths.

I believe that in the Chauvet Cave,

we've been given firsthand access

to this spiritual world.

Even if their exact meaning

has been lost over the millennia,

the discovery of these paintings

has revolutionized our understanding

of Stone Age humans.

Before that, we believed

that realistic shapes in cave paintings

were more likely recent

and that less realistic ones were probably more ancient.

But the works of art found in Chauvet

caused what scientists call a paradigm shift.

This means that we came across information

that was so new and groundbreaking

that the whole system had to be reconsidered.

This shattered the theories on the evolution of drawing.

We used to consider that art was in its infancy

with the Aurignacians.

And then, as humans evolved,

they managed to draw better and better.

But this was no longer true.

The cave art in Chauvet

is one of the earliest known expressions of human creativity.

This sanctuary has been listed

as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2014

and is recognized as a global treasure.

Chauvet is much more than a milestone in art history:

it is one of its foundations.

TOSELLO When people ask us

if there are still things to discover in Chauvet,

the answer is, "Yes, of course."

I am one of those who believe the Chauvet Cave

should be used as a sort of research school.

Chauvet opens a window on the past,

linking us to those who came before and left their mark,

a vision of their world.

GÉLY It's the dawn of time.

It's another world.

And yet, it's us.