cave containing one of the most outstanding displays of prehistoric art yet discovered. Located above the Vézère River valley near Montignac, in Dordogne, France, the cave is a short distance upstream from the Eyzies-de-Tayac (Eyzies-de-Tayac caves) series of caves. Lascaux, together with some two dozen other painted caves and 150 prehistoric settlements in the Vézère valley, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979.

The cave was discovered by four teenage boys in September 1940 and was first studied by the French archaeologist Henri Breuil (Breuil, Henri). It consists of a main cavern (some 66 feet 【20 metres】 wide and 16 feet 【5 metres】 high) and several steep galleries. Each is magnificently decorated with engraved, drawn, and painted figures, in all some 600 painted and drawn animals and symbols and nearly 1,500 engravings. The paintings were done on a light background in various shades of red, black, brown, and yellow. In places, a scaffolding was clearly used to reach high walls and the ceiling. Among the most remarkable pictures are four huge aurochs (some 16 feet 【5 metres】 long), their horns portrayed in a “twisted perspective”; a curious two-horned animal (misleadingly nicknamed the “unicorn”), perhaps intended as a mythical creature; red deer with fantastic antlers; numerous horses; the heads and necks of several stags (3 feet 【almost 1 metre】 tall), which appear to be swimming across a river; a series of six felines; two male bison; and a rare narrative composition, at the bottom of a shaft, that has been variously interpreted as a hunting accident or as a shamanistic scene.