VALLON-PONT-D'ARC: French President Francois Hollande will step back 36,000 years in time Friday into a darkened, cool cave to admire the earliest known figurative paintings of hands, bears, rhinos and panthers.
But he will actually be above ground, inaugurating a giant, millimetre-by-millimetre exact replica of the closely-guarded Grotte Chauvet in southern France, unearthed by chance in 1994 by a group of speleologists who discovered hundreds of paintings by the our prehistoric ancestors.
Nestled deep in a limestone cliff that hangs over the meandering Ardeche River, the cave is closed to the public so scientists and artists toiled for years to build the 55-million-euro ($58-million) replica down to cloning even the stalactites and stalagmites that pepper the real cavern.
The giant cave reproduction, which from the sky is shaped like a bear's paw, stands on a lush hill close to the small town of Vallon-Pont-d'Arc, just one kilometre from the real deal, which last year became a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The visitor walks down a long ramp to get into the building housing the replica, entering a darkened, cool and humid place that mirrors conditions in the grotto.
Then just like in the real cave, people stick to a walkway that takes them past replica bones and the skull of an Alpine ibex, a species of wild goat.
The drawings reveal themselves as the visitors walk further into the fake cave, a total of 1,000 paintings including 425 animals -- including bears, rhinos, big cats, owls.
Comments
Comments are closed.