On a September afternoon in 1940, four teenage boys made their way through the woods on a hill overlooking Montignac in south-western France. They had come to explore a dark, deep hole said to be an underground passage to the nearby Lascaux manor (庄园). Squeezing through the entrance one by one, they soon saw wonderfully lifelike paintings of running horses, swimming deer, wounded wild oxen, and other beings—works of art that may be up to 20,000 years old.
The collection of paintings in Lascaux is among some 150 prehistoric sites dating from the Palaeolithic period (旧石器时代)that have been documented in France’s Vezere Valley. This corner of south-western Europe seems to have been a hot spot for figurative art. The biggest discovery since Lascaux occurred in December 1994, when three cave explorers laid eyes on artworks that had not been seen since a rockslide 22,000 years ago closed off a large deep cave in southern France. Here, by unsteadily shining firelight, prehistoric artists drew outlines of cave lions, herds of rhinos (犀牛) and magnificent wild oxen, horses, cave bears. In all, the artists drew 442 animals over perhaps thousands of years, using nearly 400,000 square feet of cave surface as their canvas. The site, now known as the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc Cave, is sometimes considered the Sistine Chapel of prehistory.
For decades scholars had theorized that art had advanced in slow stages from ancient scratches to lively, naturalistic interpretation. Surely the delicate shading and elegant lines of Chauvet’s masterworks placed them at the top of that progression. Then carbon dates came in, and prehistorians felt shocked. At some 36,000 years old—nearly twice as old as those in Lascaux—Chauvet’s images represented not the peak of prehistoric art but its earliest known beginnings.
The search for the world’s oldest cave paintings continues. On the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, for example, scientists found a large room of paintings of part-human, part-animal beings that are estimated to be 44,000 years old, older than any figurative art seen in Europe.
Scholars don’t know if art was invented many times over or if it was a skill developed early in our evolution. What we do know is that artistic expression runs deep in our ancestry.
【小题1】According to the passage, where did the boys find the paintings?| A．In the woods on a hill. | B．In a deep cave in France. |
| C．In the Lascaux manor. | D．On an Indonesian island. |
| A．conveys concepts by using accurate numbers and forms |
| B．makes stories in contrast to scientific subjects |
| C．represents people or things in a realistic way |
| D．expresses ideas or feelings by using shapes and patterns |
| A．the Chauvet’s paintings had been sealed by a rockslide until 1994 |
| B．the style of Chauvet’s paintings is similar to that of the Sistine Chapel’s |
| C．Chauvet’s images are the earliest figurative paintings that have been found |
| D．the main objects of Chauvet’s images are part—human, part—animal beings |
| A．Value of Palaeolithic Artworks | B．Preservation of Figurative Art |
| C．Artistic Expressions of Nature | D．Searches for Cave Paintings |
