Ice Age Cave Art Found Under Layers of Centuries-Old Graffiti

[Judi Lynn]

By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer | November 15, 2018 01:25pm ET

For urban graffiti artists, their work is sometimes on display all too briefly before rival artists cover it up. And ice age cave art suffered a similar fate, experts have discovered.

Archaeologists suspected that two caves called Grottes d'Agneux and located in eastern France might harbor artwork produced thousands of years ago by human artists. The researchers had strong suspicions that the art was there, but the cave walls were so covered with layers of more-recent graffiti (from the 16th to 19th centuries) that the ancient art had likely been hidden for hundreds of years, representatives of the University of Tübingen in Germany reported yesterday (Nov. 14) in a statement.

Scientists with the university and researchers from Spain recently used scanning technology to peer through the graffiti layers, reconstructing carved prehistoric images of a horse and a deer buried underneath. [In Photos: The World's Oldest Cave Art]

The graffiti covering the cave walls was mostly inscriptions of names and dates with a few figurative pictures, research team leader Harald Floss, a Tübingen University professor of early prehistory and quaternary ecology, told Live Science in an email. Because the caves are in a picturesque part of the countryside with spectacular views, many people have visited the location over time — and plenty of them left their mark in the cave, Floss said.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/64099-cave-art-under-graffiti.html?utm_source=ls-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20181116-ls