The Cave No One Is Allowed to Enter

In 1940, four teenagers and a dog found a hole in a hillside in France. At the bottom were some of the most famous paintings ever made, 17,000 years old. Today almost nobody alive is allowed to see them. This is the story of Lascaux: how four boys found it, what's painted on its walls, why France locked the door just 23 years later, and how the effort to save the cave nearly destroyed it a second time. 0:00 The cave nobody sees 0:35 A dog, a tree and four teenagers 2:02 What's on the walls 3:42 The Sistine Chapel of Prehistory 4:25 Opening the cave to the world 5:00 The problem with breathing 6:33 The copy 7:20 The cure that backfired 9:04 Who gets in today 9:26 The four boys Subscribe to Curio for more true stories that sound too strange to be real. Sources: French Ministry of Culture, Lascaux site (the four discoverers; Simon Coencas 1927–2020; Max Sarradet 1915–2006); Lascaux-Dordogne tourism office, "There were four of them and a dog"; Archaeology magazine, "The Recent Troubles at Lascaux" (2008); Nature blog, "Killer fungus devouring art" (2009); Royal Society of Chemistry, "How can cave art be damaged?"; Wikipedia, "Lascaux". #Lascaux #CavePaintings #Prehistory #History #Archaeology #France #IceAge #Mystery #Curio #Documentary