On Sept. 12, 1940, a group of teenagers discovered a set of 20,000-year-old cave paintings near Montignac in southwest France. How they found the paintings is up for debate, though.
Some say the art was discovered after an 18-year-old and three friends gave chase to his dog (who was adorably named “Robot”) into a cave network, climbing down a 50-foot shaft and scrambling through narrow passageways on their elbows to retrieve his furry friend.
Another version simply has the dog stopping to dig near a hole aside a downed tree. The boys, smelling a chance to recover a hidden treasure, joined the dog in his work until they had a hole large enough to slip through. And voila – four teenagers make a discovery that changes what we know about human pre-history.
After some time, the paintings became a sensation until they were closed to the public in 1963. The cave was designated a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1979. Conservation work on the cave system continues, 80 years on.
The paintings themselves, which show mostly large animals that correlate with fossil records in the area, have been dated to around 15,000 BCE and number over 600. Read more here and here.
