Thirty thousand years ago in the Ardeche region of France a cave face collapsed in on itself and trapped something amazing. In 1995 four intrepid explorers discovered a narrow shaft on a mountain side that led to a thirty foot vertical drop being intrepid they climbed down and found bones littering the floor, left there so long ago, the cave itself had reclaimed them. incrusting them in calcite they had become strange sparkly things. moving further in they found the original cave opening blocked by a mountain slide then they found these! It looked like a hoax but considering that the cave was pristine and these were drawn with the burned end of a stick which lends itself particularly well to carbon dating they were tested and found to be 30,000 to 35,000 years old, by far the oldest untouched depiction of our natural world ever found, a world populated with cave bears, lions, hyenas, bison, rhinos, elephants, reindeer, auroch and ibex all in the middle of an ice age.
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