Lascaux Cave Drawings

For this lesson, I showed students a video that was captured of the cave drawings inside Lascaux Caves in Lascaux France.  The video was made in the 1960's so that the public could still see Lascaux's beautiful prehistoric images even though the cave was closed off to the public (in order to preserve the art).

The cave drawings are believed to date back over 17,000 years; making them the oldest art known about in the entire world!  The story goes that 4 teenage boys discovered the cave in 1940 when they noticed a hole in the ground where a tree once stood.  A lightning storm had struck the tree, revealing the hidden cave underneath.  Imagine how special you might feel if you were one of the 4 lucky boys who discovered the oldest art in the world!

In this art lesson, students were instructed to draw at least 2 animals (like those seen at Lascaux: cows, bulls, deer, bears, or a unicorn) and at least 3 symbols.  After students designed the composition of their drawing on a practice sheet, they completed a final drawing and added color with oil pastels.  We used a manilla paper to mimic the look of the ancient cave.