Rising sea levels threaten 30,000-year-old cave art under sea — and it\’s being digitally remapped

It\’s the only place in the world where cave paintings of prehistoric marine life have been found, but soon, no one will be able to enter this grotto under the Mediterranean sea

This art survived for 30,000 years, but today, the destructive nature of humankind finally seems to be speeding up its annihilation. 

At the end of a 450-ft underwater tunnel in the Mediterranean Sea off southern France, one navigates into a huge, largely submerged cavern — and the only place in the world where cave paintings of prehistoric marine life have been found. 

And now, climate change and water and plastic pollution are threatening to wash away the art our ancestors created over 15 millennia. 

Phys Org reports that every year, the high-water mark rises a few more millimeters, eating away a little more of the ancient paintings and carvings.  

The rising sea washes the walls and leeches out soil and materials that are rich in information; microplastic pollution makes the damage to the paintings even worse. 

The insides are rich with ancient art. Some 600 signs, images and carvings – some of aquatic life never before seen in cave paintings – have been found on the walls below the azure waters. At the time the art was made, it was the middle of an ice age and the sea was 135 metres lower than today. 

The walls of the cave show the coastal plain was teeming with wildlife — horses, deer, bison, ibex, prehistoric Auroch cows, saiga antelopes but also seals, penguins, fish and a cat and a bear. The 229 figures depicted on the walls cover 13 species. There are also 69 red or black hand prints as well as three left by mistake, including by children, hundreds of geometric signs and eight sexual depictions of male and female body parts.    

There is a theory that hunter gatherers were making clothes at the time when the cave was occupied. Images of horses with long manes have raised another major question about their domestication. Areas preserved under a layer of translucent calcite also show the \”remains of coal\”. But the main question of what the cave was used for remains a mystery, and some say it was: \”a sanctuary, or a meeting place, or somewhere they mined moonmilk, the white substance on (limestone) cave walls that was used for body paint and for the background for paintings and carving.\”  

It was in 1985 that Henri Cosquer, a professional deep-sea diver running a diving school, said he found the cave by chance. He kept this information to himself but rumours began to abound of another Lascaux — the cave in southwestern France that completely changed the way we see our Stone Age ancestors, which even Pablo Picasso had visited in 1940. However, when three divers died trying to make their way to this hidden treasure, Cosquer went to the government in 1991. The cave bears his name and is now sealed off by a railing, with only scientific teams allowed inside. 

But since a sudden 5-inch rise in the sea level there in 2011, archaeologist Luc Vanrell and his colleagues have been in a race against time to record everything they can. As many as 30 years after he first entered the cavern, Vanrell remembers the \”aesthetic shock\”. 

Vanrell and his team are now digitally mapping the cave for a 3D reconstruction, accurate to within millimeters, as people may soon not be able to go inside. In the near future, an almost life-sized recreation of the Cosquer cavern will open close by in Marseille. The regional government has decided it will be in a renovated modern building next to Mucem, the museum of European and Mediterranean civilisations at the mouth of the city\’s Old Port. The 23-million-euro replica is slightly smaller than the original cave, but includes copies of all the paintings and 90 percent of the carvings. 

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