UPDATED 9/12/2019: This Day in History, 1940, a collection of prehistoric cave paintings is discovered by four teenagers near Montignac, France. Following their dog “Robot” down a narrow entrance, they stumbled upon a cavern filled with ancient graffiti. The 15,000- to 17,000-year-old paintings consist mostly of animal representations that are among the finest examples of art from the Upper Paleolithic period.
The Lascaux grotto, first studied by the French archaeologist Henri-Édouard-Prosper Breuil, includes a main cavern 66 feet wide and 16 feet high. The walls are decorated with some 600 painted and drawn animals, symbols, and nearly 1,500 engravings. Numerous animals appear in excellent detail, including horses, red deer, stags, bovines, felines, and other – apparently mythical – creatures. There’s only one human figure in the cave: A bird-headed man with an erect phallus. Archaeologists believe the cave served as a center for hunting and religious rites over a long period of time.
The Lascaux grotto opened to the public in 1948. It closed in 1963 because artificial lights faded the vivid colors of the paintings and caused algae to grow over some of them. A replica of the Lascaux cave opened nearby in 1983. Tens of thousands visit annually.
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And graffiti from a slightly later period.
Indigenous artwork in Midtown Sacramento, near 16th & T Streets