'They take you out of life, out of time': a journey into Spain's astonishing cave paintings

[Danascot]

7. Lascaux in France was one of the highlights of my travels

The actual cave is closed except for limited study by scientists but the visitors center has a very accurate replica of the cave that can be visited via a guided tour. The ancient art is breathtaking. Many paintings were in deep recesses of the cave in places that would have been hard to get to or high on the walls so they would have needed ladders or some type of scaffolding. Their only light was small lamps fueled with animal fat or torches covered in resin. In some cases the irregular walls suggested to the artists shapes of animals that they painted on them. Other paintings have multiple pictures of animals over-layed to depict movement. Almost no humans are depicted. Another thing that that really impressed me was that they used small hollow bird bones as a primitive airbrush.