The Drawings of the Chauvet Cave

Remarkable for its art, the Chauvet Cave is remarkable too for all the techniques that were used. Characterized by great variation, the techniques were adapted to the medium and to the subject they intended to depict. Drawing, painting, and engraving were the most utilized techniques, emphasizing their value for the Aurignacians. In addition, the wall that would be used for the parietal art was prepared in advance – this was a part of the work.

Shading is a technique that had not been identified before the discovery of the Chauvet Cave. It gives volume and relief to the parietal representations, but also add layers to the art depending on the nature and texture of the wall. Shading first involves the application of a charcoal mark on the wall. The charcoal is then re-applied and spread with a finger or a tool.

To make incisions on hard limestone walls and imprint figures, the Aurignacians used flint or sharp bone fragments.

Paleolithic people used their fingers and tools such as sticks or bones to scrape the clay and/or imprint figures, especially high up.

In the Chauvet Cave, figures consisting of red dots or handprints were made by placing a palm filled with ocher on the wall.

Figures were made by blowing pigment on the wall (aerography). People of the Paleolithic era prepared the pigment and spit it directly around their hand. A bone tube was also used which allowed more accurate projections.

Drawing was an essential cultural act within the Paleolithic hunter-gatherer community. On the one hand, it embodies beliefs incarnated through animal or abstract symbols, and, more rarely, through human beings. On the other hand, it is the product of a symbolic human act. This act is conceived and prepared well in advance. Thus, the collection and preparation of materials are part of the collective operational chain leading to the creation of prehistoric art. Therefore, the role of the painter requires expert knowledge of materials and the artistic process.

The parietal representations mainly include animals, geometric signs, and rare, often crudely sketched, human beings. The sun, the moon, trees, volcanoes, or rivers are never represented. All these figures, observed alone or sometimes embedded in monumental frescoes, follow rules in their composition and there was a symbolic function for people of the prehistoric age. In this sense, Prehistoric art is probably a form of narration related to oral traditions and the transmission of knowledge.

Prehistoric humans have represented 20 species of animals, very often powerful and monumental. These animals are all symbols. Their naturalistic representation therefore is not an attempt to reproduce a real vision of the landscapes in which they lived. Large mammals dominate and are given great preference in comparison to small fauna that are almost nonexistent. In addition, prehistoric people did not represent the same species in different periods. For example, the Aurignacians favored dangerous species that they did not hunt. Alternatively, nearly 15,000 years later at the time of the Lascaux Cave, people depicted more cattle, deer, and horses, animals that they hunted and consumed. This evolution could be associated with a change in the representation of myths and beliefs.

This major Paleolithic sanctuary is a testament representing a universal heritage: the first great masterpiece in the history of humanity.