The elusive drawings in the access gallery

The elusive drawings of Font-de-Gaume

In the early 1980s, Alain Roussot, Norbert Aujoulat and Paulette Daubisse undertook a systematic inspection of the walls of the access gallery before the famous Rubicon. Until then, it was thought that the drawings in this first part of the cave must have disappeared for preservation reasons. The remains of more than a dozen paintings were then identified and studied. These are often just subtle red or purplish dots or lines. The outline of a mammoth, around fifty centimetres long, has also been identified.

These inconspicuous discoveries confirm the prominence of the cave’s ornate features, which probably extended over a very large part of the current network when they were created. All we know now is the deepest part, miraculously preserved from the ravages of time.