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Ice Age's 'Sistine
Chapel' Revealed

By David Derbyshire
Science Correspondent
The Telegraph - UK
7-13-4
 
Elaborate carvings of birds, beasts and dancers etched into a cave roof by a prehistoric "Michelangelo" were yesterday unveiled by archaeologists.
 
The Stone Age engravings, thought to be about 13,000 years old, are among the most spectacular of their kind in the world.
 
The artwork was discovered earlier this year in the Church Hole Cave in the Creswell Crags, Notts. Last year, 12 engraved figures were found on a cave wall close by - the first examples of cave art discovered in Britain.
 
Yesterday, archaeologists described the cave as the "Sistine Chapel of the Ice Age".
 
The roof is one of the most important finds from the British Stone Age since the discovery of 500,000-year-old human remains at Boxgrove, West Sussex in the mid-1990s.
 
The drawings, carved into limestone, include bison, deer, bears, birds and possibly dancing women.
 
Paul Pettitt, an archaeologist at Leicester University, said: "This find represents the most richly carved ceilings in the whole of cave art and shows a number of new themes and techniques. It also demonstrates that cave art is spread across a much wider geographical area than we originally thought."
 
Creswell Crags is a limestone gorge, riddled with fissures and caves.
 
It was occupied by people during the last Ice Age, between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago and was among the most northerly places visited by our ancestors.
 
Before the first Creswell Crags engravings were found last year, no cave art had ever been discovered in Britain. Most rock art was about 8,000 years later and was usually carved on exposed rocks.
 
Paul Bahn, a member of the research team, said: "We saw the figures during sunny mornings when the cave was illuminated by a brilliant reflected light. This type of carving is extremely rare on cave ceilings and is a significant find."
 
While more sophisticated cave paintings have survived in France and Spain, similar drawings further north were thought to have been destroyed by Britain's damp climate.
 
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/
07/14/ncarv14.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/14/ixhome.html
 


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