Lascaux Cave was discovered by chance in 1940 by four teenagers following their dog. Inside, they found more than 600 paintings and over 1,500 engravings: huge aurochs, horses, deer and bison, processing from chamber to chamber. The largest figure in the "Hall of the Bulls" approaches five metres in length.

The paintings were not made in a single moment; stratigraphic analysis suggests use spread over several millennia. To work in deep, completely lightless parts of the cave, the artists used oil lamps, scaffolds, and surprisingly sophisticated techniques — giving figures volume, direction of movement, and even two-tone back lines.

Why Lascaux was made remains debated: ritual, hunting magic, seasonal calendar, sky observation, storytelling have all been proposed. What is clear is this: 17,000 years ago, with no agriculture, no permanent settlement and no writing, people considered it worth weeks of communal labour, in a place difficult to reach, to build a shared visual narrative.

The cave was closed to the public in 1963 for conservation. Today visitors see full-scale replicas — Lascaux II and Lascaux IV — built only a few hundred metres away.