The cave beneath the sea : Paleolithic images at Cosquer

Abstract

In 1991, a diver named Cosquer discovered an important prehistoric painted cave. The entrance lay 120 feet below sea level, sealed by the flooding Mediterranean at the end of the last ice age, 9500 years earlier than Lascaux. This is an account of the initial discovery and an analysis of the images found there. The artworks were dated by radio-carbon tests to an age of 27,000 years. The undersea gallery includes pictures of land animals such as horses, ibex, chamois, and the huge, long-extinct megaloceros deer; marine animals such as seals and great auks, which flourished in the then-frigid Mediterranean climate; dozens of paintings of human hands; and amazingly, a drawing of a human killed by a spear, an unusual subject in paleolithic art. The authors discuss in detail the size, style and location of the images, and compare them with art found in other prehistoric caves.

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