One day in 1940, five young boys were hunting for rabbits in the hills near the town of Montignac, France. The dog that they had brought along with them, named Robot, suddenly disappeared. The boys began searching for him on a hill called Lascaux. They heard Robot’s barks and followed them to a small hole in the hill, the dog had fallen into this hole and could not get out.
One of the boys climbed down into the hole to fetch the dog. lie found himself in a cave 25 feet below the surface. When he struck a match, he couldn’t believe his eves. All around him on the walls of the cave were paintings of horses, bulls, stags, and other animals. What the boy didn’t know at the time was that these paintings were the work of primitive people who had lived in the region, and that no one had seen the paintings for 15,000 years!
The cave paintings of Lascaux, France are probably the world’s most famous cave paintings. Each year people come from around the world to see the artwork done by their ancestors many thousands of years ago. These paintings were made long before the first cities appeared on earth.
But the paintings at Lascaux are not the oldest paintings in the world, or even in France. For not far from Lascaux, a block of stone was found hearing pictures of animals that scientists believe date from around the year 25,000 B.C.!
