January
19
/ 2016
A team of researchers has theorized that rock carvings in the form of spray-like flourishes from a cone shape are the earliest known depictions of a volcanic eruption. The carvings and associated cave paintings date back about 36,000 years and were discovered in the French cave Chauvet-Pont d’Arc near Ardèche in 1994. The cave has some of the world’s earliest artworks, say authors Sebastien Nomade of the Sciences of Climate and the Environment Laboratory of the University of Paris-Saclay and his team. The age of the cave’s paintings has been engulfed in controversy, they write, but radiocarbon dating of charcoal used to draw them has estimated their age at around 37,000 to 34,000 years before the present. The United Nations
