French cave home to earliest drawings wins World Heritage status

A view of paintings on the rock walls of the Chauvet cave, on June 13, 2014 in Vallon Pont d'Arc, southeastern France. AFP Photo

UN cultural agency UNESCO on Sunday granted its prized World Heritage status to a prehistoric cave in southern France containing the earliest known figurative drawings.
      
Delegates at UNESCO's World Heritage Committee voted to grant the status to the Grotte Chauvet at a gathering in Doha, where they are considering cultural and natural wonders for inclusion on the UN list.
      
The cave in the Ardeche region, which survived sealed off for millennia before its discovery in 1994, contains more than 1,000 drawings dating back some 36,000 years to what is believed to be the first human culture in Europe.
      
"I had the chance, I should say the privilege, to visit the cave... and I was literally stunned by what I saw, which revolutionises our views of our origins," France's envoy to UNESCO Philippe Lalliot said after the vote.
      
A French lawmaker for the Ardeche, Pascal Terrasse, described the cave as "a first cultural act".
      
"This artist has now been recognised," Terrasse said. "May he forgive us for waiting 36,000 years to recognise his work."        

UNESCO said the Grotte Chauvet "contains the earliest and best-preserved expressions of artistic creation of the Aurignacian people, which are also the earliest known figurative drawings in the world," UNESCO said.
      
"The large number of over 1,000 drawings covering over 8,500 square metres (90,000 square feet), as well as their high artistic and aesthetic quality, make Grotte Chauvet an exceptional testimony of prehistoric cave art."       

The opening of the cave, located about 25 metres (yards) underground, was closed off by a rockfall 23,000 years ago.        

It lay...

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