somewhere in the hills just over there
is the chauvet cave it was discovered in
1994 and inside his artwork that's
around 30 000 years old some of the best
preserved cave paintings anywhere in the
world it's a connection to ancestors who
lived tens of millennia before history
began only a lucky few people are ever
allowed in that cave and almost all of
them are scientific researchers and
conservators there's no way that some
guy with a camera is ever going to get
in there
right
the chevy cave is the
oldest painted cave we know of the cave
has been rediscovered the 19th of
december 1994. it has been a tremendous
discovery
it has pretty much changed everything
before until then
roughly a thousand representations
paintings drawings engravings the
engravings are white in color the
paintings are red and the drawings which
are made with charcoal black
this isn't the real cave it's a replica
called chauvet ii and when i say replica
i don't just mean the art but the shapes
of the cave walls that it's painted on
were laser-scanned and recreated cavers
and historians would be able to pick up
things that give it away like the
suspiciously well-maintained lighting
but to a layperson this is roughly the
experience you'd get standing in the
original chauvet cave
if it had been turned into a tourist
attraction complete with a lot of other
exhibits outside so my question is if
you can replicate something this
accurately
how much does it matter that it's not
the original the original cave was
scanned several times so we've gathered
a point cloud that was made of 16
billions points the original trevor cave
takes roughly 500 meters to get from the
entrance to the end of the cave so it is
really huge
in the original cave you could walk for
five six seven minutes and see nothing
it would have been waste to recreate the
cave as it was because the point was to
make it more accessible so it has been
reduced but if there's something that we
did not change
it's the drawing themselves the
representation uh they're where they're
supposed to be you see them in the order
that you're supposed to see them in the
original cave and if at some point we've
changed sizes of some rooms we did not
touch the walls on which the paintings
and the drawings were made they're
exactly
in the same place in the very same shape
as the original ones
the walls are concrete the finer details
such as bones stalactites stagnite and
so on it is a resin modeled to the shape
of the original cave
the art is recreated by hand they've
been made as precisely as
could humanly be possible
to the millimeter actually they did not
only do it by hand but they did use the
same the very same type of wood to make
the charcoal and the painting the
reddish painting they're made of
hematite the same type of rock that was
used by the prehistoric painters
tourists aren't allowed in the original
cave for very good reasons that lesson
was learned at las go another cave a few
hours west of here
that was also filled with prehistoric
art it was discovered in 1940 and it was
opened as a tourist attraction
which destroyed it not completely but
the presence of a thousand people a day
and the changes in temperature and
humidity and carbon dioxide levels and
contaminants that all of them brought
along
well it meant that after tens of
thousands of years of stability bacteria
fungi and algae took over the walls
despite desperate conservation efforts
through the 20th century velasco cave
will never ever be what it once was
the
prehistoric entrance of the chauvet cave
is sealed off tons and tons of rock that
collapsed right on the entrance and
sealed it off all the people all the
animals that got inside of the cave
during prehistoric times they cannot
possibly enter the cave anymore and it
has been so for at least 21 000 years
the fact that the cave has been isolated
from the outside world it made the
atmosphere here very stable which
allowed the paintings and the drawings
to to be preserved the way they are the
trouble is tourists like visiting the
real places there is something about
actually being there about standing
exactly where an ancestor painted on a
wall
and this cave can't provide that but it
isn't a disney world mock recreation
it's pretty accurate and just a few
kilometers away from the original the
sights the physical sensations are close
except you don't have to be harnessed in
and climb down a big ladder to get here
if the original cave had been opened to
tourists it would have been changed
maybe devastated
would this feel the same if someone
built this replica in paris or in london
or sydney how much does the context of
the experience matter how important is
authenticity
i don't have the answers to any of that
but i can say that a few times while
i've walked around here even with the
rational knowledge that it's not the
same place even knowing that i will exit
through the gift shop
for a few seconds
bit of my brain was fooled although
maybe that's because i got to be in here
alone after hours either way i do like
one idea that in another 30 000 years
time some future archaeologist is going
to be really confused
by two identical caves next to each
other the huge amounts of painted caves
we've discovered yet
all the art they've left us it shows us
that those societies were in good health
because
if they did have time to do all of this
it's because they had free time
and it it shows they they do have a life
they do have culture they do have
art as we do today they might have not
done it for the very same reason but
they do have it and it shows that
they do not just merely survive
they live
you