The first cave paintings were discovered in 1940 by four boys, who were hunting

hunting in France and discovered the paintings on the cave wall. The Lascaux cave paintings are believed to be 16 to 17,000 years old. The cave paintings showed what prehistoric people hunted for food. Some of the animals that were painted on the walls were deer, oxen,bull,horses, and even rhinoceros. They also showed that the weapon hunters used were spears. The paintings were colorful and life like. In order to do these cave paintings they used lanterns filled with animal fat to light their way into the cave. Some of the chambers that they drew took hours of crawling threw air tight tunnels. one of scientists theory's is that the men drew what they wanted to catch on the hunt. the colors of theses magnificent cave paintings were red, brown and yellow ochres of iron and black from charcoal. The tools they used to do these painting were brushes made of burnt sticks, they also blew paint from their finger on to the rock by using their mouth. Designs were sometimes made by flint tools in which they engraved the walls with. The paintings were mostly of what they hunted like mammoth, deer, horses, wild cattle, bison, and rhinoceros. There were not many human figures painted on the walls. In two caves they left a symbol by blowing paint around their hands to leave an outline. The oldest cave painting is thought to be 30,000 years old. We still do not know why these people painted and we probly never will.