The Sistine Chapel of Prehistory

n 1940, four boys were walking with their dog in the woods near Périgord in the Dordogne, France. When the dog disappeared down a hole they crawled after it, and found themselves at the bottom of a scree slope in a large, dark chamber. They returned the following day with lights, and discovered that the chamber was a natural cave decorated with fabulous images of horses, oxen and deer.

At first they kept their discovery a secret, but eventually told their teacher who in turn contacted the eminent prehistorian Abbé Breuil. He went at once to the site, and confirmed that the boys were the first people since the age of the reindeer to set eyes upon the most remarkable collection of quartenary art yet discovered. Its name came to be known around the world - Lascaux.

Since then, other caves have been found which are of equal archaeological importance, particularly around south-western France and northern Spain, but none has captured the imagination of amateur and academic alike in quite the same way as Lascaux. It is the freshness and freedom of expression of the paintings, and their elegant use of space, which allow these works to speak to us across the countless millennia.

The first chamber is a large, sloping, water-carved hall (the Hall of Bulls). At its end is a narrow, high gallery, its end blocked by clay, whilst on the right a narrow corridor (the Corridor of Engravings) leads to an oval room with a high, domed ceiling (the Apse). On the right of the Apse is a well, and on the left an opening onto a rectangular room with a deep floor (the Nave). There are no stalactites or stalagmites apart from a single column at the end of the Nave. The walls are smooth and dry and, before the paintings were executed, were coated with a thin layer of white calcite which in places has flaked off to reveal the warm yellow rock beneath.

The Hall of Bulls depicts an apparent stampede mostly of horses and bulls converging on a small group of standing stags to the left of the opening to the high gallery. The four most imposing bulls are painted in black outline with some mottling. The horses, which possess a remarkable feeling of fluid movement, are predominantly coloured grey-brown, but a couple of the larger ones are a beautiful red with black shading on manes, legs and bellies giving them an astonishing realism. The stags, coloured in graduated blacks, reds and browns, have complex and delicate antlers.

In the high gallery the composition extends partly onto the ceiling. The layout is more irregular than in the Hall of Bulls, and features files of brown and black horses, isolated elegant cattle and horses vaulting and capering, coloured in blacks, reds and yellows, and two goats in outline. Between the animals are many strange, geometric shapes - arrows, boxes and grids.

The Corridor of Engravings was once painted, but has been mostly erased - possibly by the passage of people through the confined space. There are many figures carved into the walls, but they are small, complex and difficult to disentangle.

The paintings in the Apse and the Nave are generally less well preserved than in the first two chambers, due to the lesser surface coating of calcite, which acted as a fixative and prevented the over-engraving of the figures by later artists which has removed paint particles. Prominent among the figures in the Nave are a huge black bull, which obliterates a number of horses. Its size and its strange proportions make it jar with the other designs. It stands on some brightly coloured chequerboard "blazons".

The most startling scene is in the well in the Apse. It is the only depiction of a human. He lies dead or dying before a wounded bison. Beside him lies what appears to be a staff surmounted by a bird. It would seem to portray a hunting accident.

The pigments - blacks, reds and yellows - were extracted from the earth and emulsified with animal fats. They were applied by several methods - fingers, brushes made of hair or feathers and, remarkably, by blowing through hollow reeds or bones, which created the graduated effects of many of the horses manes. They were created not by a single artist, but by many generations, each adhering closely to the fluid, lifelike style.

Some years ago it was realised that the paintings were in danger of being damaged by the atmospheric changes caused by visitors. The solution was to airlock the cave and admit only small number of specialists. To allow greater numbers to appreciate the works, a precise replica of the first two chambers - Lascaux II - has been constructed. A team of sculptors painstakingly duplicated the contours of the original cave in concrete, which was then painted over a period of years using authentic materials. The result, according to those who have experienced both, is physically indistinguishable from its ancient twin.

Which Wonder of the World was recently thought to have been rediscovered?

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