Chauvet and the development of symbolic behavior

What is it about?

There is an ongoing debate about the age of Chauvet's cave art. Radiocarbon dating suggests the art was made at least 35,000 years ago, but some scholars believe there were flaws in the dating methods and that the art is "too good" to be that old. The underlying question is really whether people prior to 35,000 years ago could produce art of this quality. We believe they could and use the geometric signs to compare Chauvet with other early sites and poorly dated sites in its vicinity.

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Why is it important?

The geometric signs have the potential to not only be useful in the Chauvet debate, but also to offer new insight into other questions currently being addressed in the field of Paleolithic art. The specificity of these images allows them to be easily tracked in a way not always possible with the animal imagery as many animals appear in all periods and stylistic indicators (e.g., hoof shape, perspective, etc.) are not always unambiguously identified with one period.