Les entrées préhistoriques à la grotte Chauvet - Pont d’Arc

Abstract

The Chauvet cave consists of two main parts, one in the South, the other in the North being the most decorated. The southern part had an entrance currently blocked by rockfalls. This paper shows that Palaeolithic men have not crossed the South part to enter the North part of the cave. The opening so called Le Seuil, used now by archaeologists to enter the northern part, has no anthropological layout nor print of men or animals. Other entrances existed at the northern ends had been confirmed by the presence of ichnofossils and the cave's morphogenesis resulting of an old underground shortcut of the Ardèche river.