Cave painting

The oldest known cave engravings in France, and possibly Europe, have been discovered in the Loire Valley, with researchers uncovering designs dating back at least 57,000 years to the age of Neanderthals.

According to the findings, reported on June 21 the American journal PLOS One, the engravings, also called finger-flutings, predate the arrival of Homo sapiens to Western Europe.

Prehistoric cave paintings are extremely rare south-east of the Alps, but in 2009 a scientist stumbled upon mysterious red and black lines and dots inside a little-known cave in the south-west of the country in the first such discovery in Slovenia.

To reach the only place in the world where cave paintings of prehistoric marine life have been found, archaeologists have to dive to the bottom of the Mediterranean off southern France.

Then they have to negotiate a 137-meter natural tunnel into the rock, passing through the mouth of the cave until they emerge into a huge cavern, much of it now submerged.

A Turkish expert, who has been working on petroglyphs for a decade, has alleged that his team has found some cave paintings belonging to ancient Turks in Mongolia's Gobi Desert that need geological dating.

Neanderthals may have been closer to our species of prehistoric modern human than previously believed after cave paintings found in Spain proved they had a fondness for creating art, one of the authors of a new scientific report said on Aug. 9.

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Experts discovered some 8,000-year-old deer drawings made with ochre on the walls of mountain caves in the eastern province of Erzurum's Tortum district on June 26.

Cave paintings dating back 1,500 years, including one that looks like the fictional character Pinocchio, have been found in western Turkey.

A painting of an animal in an Indonesian cave dates from at least 40,000 years ago, making it the world's oldest piece of figurative art, new research has shown, reports AFP. 

The painting in Borneo, possibly depicting a native type of wild cattle, is among thousands of artworks discovered decades ago in the remote region.

BELGRADE - More than 50 cave etchings thought to be around 14,500 years old have been found in the northern Spanish town of Lekeitio, Associated Press reported.

Bizkaia regional official Unai Rementeria announced the discovery in a press conference on Thursday, saying the etchings were a "treasure of mankind", and "of exceptional technical quality and visibility".

A true-to-life replica of renowned Stone Age cave paintings have been replicated in three years by a group of artists as part of a projectAn army of artisans have laid down their paintbrushes, chisels and pigments after three years of painstaking work to create a true-to-life replica of renowned Stone Age cave paintings long hidden away in southwestern France.