Art
In 1994 news of the discovery of Chauvet Cave in France and its walls full of Paleolithic art spread rapidly, and photographs of the woolly rhinoceroses, lions, bears and other animals, including this owl, were almost immediately available to accompany the early reports. Photographs of the owl were not as widely circulated as were those of the grotto’s megafauna, but Paleolithic bird images were not as widely produced as the megafauna were, either. Years earlier, André Leroi-Gourhan (1911–1986), former director of the Museé de l’Homme in Paris, had surveyed seventy-two caves in France and neighboring countries and listed over 2,000 animal images on the walls. Among them, horse images outnumbered the rest, with 610; bison followed with 510; and mammoths came in a distant third with 205. Fish accounted for a paltry 8, and birds (or their heads) for only 6 (2 in Lascaux, 4 in Les Trois Frères).[3]


next page-->

Plate 2 Owl in Chauvet Cave, Vallon–Pont d'Arc, France, c.30,000 BCE.