Chauvet cave paintings: A volcanic eruption from 36,000 years ago artwork

Chauvet cave paintings: A volcanic eruption from 36,000 years ago – as captured by prehistoric man

Scientists believe that they have identified the oldest known images of erupting volcanoes, daubed in red and white pigments over other cave paintings in south-eastern France around 36,000 years ago.

The puzzling and apparently abstract images were first found in 1994 among startlingly precise paintings of lions, mammoths and other animals at a complex of caverns at Chauvet in the Ardèche.

A team of French scientists, ranging from geologists to palaeontologists, now believe that the surging, fountain-like images are the only example in Europe of prehistoric paintings of landscapes or natural phenomena. The oldest images of volcanoes previously identified were drawn 8,000 years ago at Catalhoyuk in central Turkey.

The findings of the French team – published at the weekend on the scientific website PLoS One – could transform conceptions about prehistoric art. The cave paintings at Chauvet are already among the oldest, most beautiful and most elaborate in the world.

Like all other known cave art in Europe, they depict animals and – in the case of Chauvet – human hands. If the volcano thesis is accepted, historians may have to revise their theories about the meaning and purpose of cave paintings.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/chauvet-cave-paintings-a-volcanic-eruption-from-36000-years-ago-as-captured-by-prehistoric-man-a6805001.html

Another
Same story but with tons of great photos from the new museum in France which duplicated the paintings and the cave itself

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3393401/Are-images-volcanic-eruption-Daubs-red-white-pigment-cave-walls-thought-depict-natural-disaster-36-000-years-ago.html