Object description

The Marsoulas Cave in Southwestern France, near Marsoulas in the Haute-Garonne, is a small cave notable for its archaeological wealth, including Paleolithic cave paintings and ornaments from the Magdalenian. It consists of a straight gallery about 100 m long with parietal art along the entire length of the cave. The art includes human and animal figures as well as geometric forms and has been described as being of "profound stylistic originality with few equivalents in the region from the same period". The prehistoric artists who produced these used the varied topography of the cave and ceiling to produce three-dimensional engravings and paintings in scales ranging between 2.2 m to tiny miniatures.