DEEP IN THE EARTH OUR ANCESTORS PAINTED!

I don't know what was better-- the movie The Cave of Forgotten Dreams -- or my exploration of the Chauvet Cave on the internet.
The cave, first explored in 1994, is in the Ardèche valley region of France.
There is some dispute over the age of the drawings. Carbon dating isn't as accurate as we might be lead to believe. They might range from 32,000 BC to much more recent. Does it matter?
More than 400 painted or engraved animalsare found in the extensive cave.And these are well illustrated in the links below. 
On one of the sites I found a youtube link which gave a beautiful tour of the most impressive of the Chauvet cave art. On another is an interactive map of the cave which allows you to see features of the limestone structure of the cave as well as the art work, remains of cave bears, and human footprints.

www.donsmaps.com/chauvetcave.html
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/september-2011/article/revisiting-the-chauvet-cave 
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2001/08/01/html/ft_20010801.6.html
www.bradshawfoundation.com/chauvet/

This is a cave bear skull that has been placed on a rock in the distant past.

  The animals these Palaeolithic people painted included bison, aurachs, mammoths, lions and leopards, horses, bears, rhinoceros with long wicked horns. 


most of these pictures are courtesy Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license