cave painting stories

1. Prehistoric Cave Paintings
An Exploration of the Discovery at
Lascaux, and Themes of Paleolithic
Era Cave Paintings

2. Cave Paintings: The Prehistoric
Novel
• As you may already
know, before man had a
written language, stories
and history were passed
down in other ways. We
will explore cave
paintings today as the
prehistoric way of
recording important
events.

3. The Discovery at Lascaux
• On September 12, 1940, four
teenagers stumbled upon a
major discovery. When an old
pine tree fell down, it showed a
hole in the ground under its
roots. The teenagers
discovered the hole, went
down inside of it, and found
the historic cave paintings at
Lascaux. It was thought that
these paintings had been done
originally more than 17,000
years ago.

4. A Painting From the Hall of the
Bulls at Lascaux

5. An Image From the Painted
Gallery at Lascaux

6. Interpreting Cave Paintings

7. Cave Painting Themes
• Most cave paintings
have these major
themes:
– Animals
– Human
representations
– signs

8. What Story Do
You See in This
Painting?

9. Other Cave Painting at Lascaux

10. More Images From Lascaux

11. Resources
• This slide show was compiled using the
resource:
• http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/index.html
• For more information and great activities, as well as extra credit, visit
this website, and write a one page summary of what you learned, in
your own words.