The Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc :

The Net surfer can visualize the rooms of this cave inaccessible to the public, approach the panels painted by successive zooms and take the measurement of the talent of the artists who decorated the walls with hundreds of animals..
Sunday December 18, 1994 on the circus of Estre, Jean-Marie Chauvet, leads her two friends Éliette Brunel and Christian Hillaire towards cliffs: light draught, emanating from a small hole, at the bottom of a small cave drew its attention and he wants to have a clean heart. Their passion to all three is speleology, and they do not count any more the discoveries and the first. The afternoon is advanced and the small cavity, in which they penetrate, already known, is located very close to a way of great excursion. But there, behind the fall, there is something it is sure, then they dig and release a passage in which they thread. They end up overhanging an obscure vacuum, they do not have enough material to continue. They join their vehicles whereas it makes already night, take the necessary, hesitate a little, and finally, turn over to their discovery. They go down by their speleological scale and discover a vast room with a very high ceiling filled of splendid scintillating concretions. They progress in Indian file towards another room, quite as vast, and admire the unexpected geological beauties which surround them. They see also bones of animals. They traverse almost all the network and on the way of the return, Éliette sees in the beam its frontal a small mammoth with the red blood on a rock: "They came! "exclaims and, as from this moment, they observed with attention all the walls, discovering hundreds of paintings and engravings.
Their life rocked. Of return, at Éliette ‘s, they report their adventure to his daughter who, not believing them, obliges them to turn over to the cave: it is more than 21 hours, and in spite of tiredness and the emotions, they yield. They make other discoveries and arise, certainly filled with wonder, but also with a certain anxiety vis-a-vis to so much of responsibilities. Next saturdays, the day before of Christmas, they decide to protect the ground by covering the trace from their prints with a lay of plastic, thus materializing a sacrificed way which will be borrowed by all, from now on. After declaration of the discovery, Jean-Pierre Daugas Conservator of the Inheritance at the regional Management of the cultural affairs of hône-Alps then informs Jean Clottes ,scientific advisor in the Ministry of the Culture and specialist in the decorated caves, for an authentification. December 29, 1994, under the control of the discoverers, expedition is assembled.