France

by Stephen Alvarez|October 9, 2026October 14, 2026|36000 BP, Chauvet, Europe, France, news

Very few people will ever stand inside Chauvet Cave. The French government controls access, the public is not allowed in, and even the scientists who study it work under strict limits. That makes NOVA's new film, Stone Age Masterpiece, a rare thing: nearly an hour inside one of the most important art sites on Earth. The episode (Season 53, Episode 11) premiered September 30 on PBS and is streaming free on pbs.org through October 29, 2026. Watch it while you can. Watch NOVA: Stone Age Masterpiece on PBS What the film covers Chauvet was sealed by a rockfall more than 20,000 years ago and rediscovered in December 1994 by Éliette Brunel, Christian Hillaire, and Jean-Marie Chauvet. Radiocarbon dates from charcoal put the drawings at more than 37,000 years old, nearly twice the age of Lascaux. NOVA follows the research team as they rebuild the cave's whole history, starting with the...

Digital Twins

by Stephen Alvarez|January 17, 2025January 17, 2025|Europe, France, Rock Art

A "digital twin," a detailed 3D model of Notre Dame became the blueprint for rebuilding the gothic cathedral after the devastating 2019 fire. In 2010 the late Andrew Tallon set out to make a 3D scan of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. His purpose was pure research, a way to look at the construction and planning of the gothic masterpiece. The craftsmen left no record of why they made decisions about construction, no records of technique, no firsthand accounts. In interviews Tallon said that looking at the details of construction was like looking into the mind of the builders. The best way to take in those details as a whole was to build the cathedral digitally. He used state of the art 3D scanners to collect billions of datapoints. Tallon built a digital twin of the Cathedral. LUX has an excellent post about this (here). And a podcast for those...

Rock Art: What are Pictographs, Petroglyphs, and Geoglyphs?

by ancientartarch|November 19, 2024March 2, 2025|age, California, cave art, Chauvet, Emery County, France, geoglyph, Native American, North America, Painting, Paleolithic, petroglyph, pictograph, Rock Art, Uncategorized, Utah

Rock Art: Pictographs, Petroglyphs, and Geoglyphs. Three techniques are used by the world's first artists. What do those terms mean and what does the art look like?

Growing evidence of Neanderthal “Art”

by Stephen Alvarez|June 23, 2023June 23, 2023|age, cave art, Europe, France, petroglyph

Claims that other species besides Homo Sapiens made art or used "symbolic behavior" have been met with skepticism. But evidence that Neanderthals did produce symbols keeps growing. In a paper published this week in the Journal PLOS One,

Chauvet Pont d’Arc the discovery of 36,000-year-old art

Upper Paleolithic Proto Writing

by ancientartarch|January 5, 2023January 5, 2023|Aurignacian, cave art, Chauvet, Europe, France, Painting, Uncategorized

We know that ancient artists were exacting observers of the natural world. But it is mind bending that they may have had a written time keeping system 20,000 years ago.