The Lascaux cave

Sounds like lasso, but with an sc, like the sc in the word school.

Discovery

• The Lascaux cave was discovered in 1940 by four teenagers. The cave is located in the Bordeaux (Bore-Dough) region of France on the river Vezere (Viz-Zare). There are more than 100 Paleolithic caves in the region.

• Paleolithic (period of time when people were still using stone tools, but people had started farming).

Bordeaux France

• The cave drawings in the Lascaux cave originate from the prehistoric era-15,000 to 13,000 BCE. The many paintings, drawings, and engravings give us insight into the world of these early people. Many of the cave images are of animals such as bulls, bison, and horses. This is very significant, as these early people were hunters. They relied on animals for food, for life itself. These drawings tell us about the lives of the people who made them.

Talking Wall

• We are going to make this classroom into a “Talking Wall.” On Monday or Tuesday, you are going to take a virtual tour of the Lascaux cave in France. However, today you are going to have the chance to record images from your own culture. Historians and archaeologists sometimes learn about cultures by analyzing the images that those cultures leave behind.

• We are going to cover the back wall of our classroom with our own cave paintings. Before you begin, I want you to imagine people discovering your drawings many centuries into the future. Which aspects of your lives do you think is important enough to represent in your cave painting. Technology, government, food, and entertainment are some of the areas you may want to consider. Using only images such as drawings, I want you to create a rich depiction of your daily lives. When everyone is finished, we will talk about the images, and what they say about our class.