The Chauvet cave paintings are, of course, famous as being the oldest cave paintings in the world — French archaeologists date them at 33,000 B.C.E.
But are they really that old?
According to this Telegraph article there’s actually some controversy over that. A couple British archaeologists argues that the French claim is off by about 18,000 years and that the French archaeologists were under intense political pressure to go with the earlier date in order to butress the “oldest cave paintings in the world” claim.
Who’s right? Don’t look at me — I don’t know. But the last paragraph of the story speaks volumes about how diligently the French tried to confirm the actual date of the cave paintings,
The French allowed only a single French laboratory to analyse the carbon in the charcoal used in the drawings and refused to send comparable samples to other facilities around the world for dating.
If that’s true, it seems kind of odd given the importance of establishing as closely as possible the true date of the cave paintings.
Source:
Britain and France in dispute over cave art. Philip Delves Broughton, Telegraph (London), October 16, 2003.