Where is the oldest cave painting in the world, with a woman being depicted as half-bison?
It can be found at the The Chauvet Cave (Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave)located near Vallon-Pont-d’Arc, in the Ardche dpartement, in southern France. Hundreds of animal paintings have been catalogued, depicting at least 13 different species, including those which have rarely or never been found in other ice age paintings. Rather than depicting only the familiar animals of the hunt that predominate in Paleolithic cave art, i.e. horses, cattle, reindeer, etc., the walls of the Chauvet Cave are covered with predatory animals: lions, panthers, bears, owls, rhinos and hyenas. Typical of most cave art, there are no paintings of complete human figures, although there is one possible partial “Venus” figure that may represent the legs and genitals of a woman. Also a chimerical figure may be present; it appears to have the lower body of a woman with the upper body of a bison. The researchers found that the cave had been untouched for 20,000-30,000 years.
