- Elaborate carvings of birds, beasts and dancers etched
into a cave roof by a prehistoric "Michelangelo" were yesterday
unveiled by archaeologists.
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- The Stone Age engravings, thought to be about 13,000
years old, are among the most spectacular of their kind in the world.
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- 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.
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- Yesterday, archaeologists described the cave as the "Sistine
Chapel of the Ice Age".
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- 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.
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- The drawings, carved into limestone, include bison, deer,
bears, birds and possibly dancing women.
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- 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."
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- Creswell Crags is a limestone gorge, riddled with fissures
and caves.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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