The original cave is threatened by rising sea levels, due to climate change. It is scheduled to be made public in June 2022. Scientists and specialists are currently building an exact replica of the Cosquer Cave for a maritime museum in Marseille. "But within 50 years, the visitors' torches and breathing had damaged the works of art so badly that they had to be closed."
"The Lascaux caves, for example, were opened to visitors after they were discovered," points out Fritz Jürgens. The prehistoric Cosquer Cave is now a protected area open only to researchers. "They include a stencil painting of a human hand and the only known Stone Age depiction of a penguin." The stenciled Stone Age hand in the Cosquer Cave Image: MC DRAC/SRA PACA/Luc Vanrell A replica to secure the prehistoric art "That's how these 20,000-year-old and very unique Stone Age cave paintings survived," researcher Jürgens told DW. But as the polar ice caps thawed, the sea level gradually rose, and the cave entrance was at some point deep under water. Towards the end of an ice age, this cave, which is about 11 kilometers (7 miles) off the coast in southern France, was used and painted by Stone Age people. "There are particularly good conservation conditions there." "It's the only underwater Stone Age cave that is known to us to date," explains marine archaeologist Fritz Jürgens from the University of Kiel, who also dives to explore such caves. The paintings mainly showed animals - seals, fish, horses, bison, mountain goats, sea birds - that were surprisingly lifelike. The archaeologists and scientists who later examined the cave found that the drawings were approximately 19,000 to 27,000 years old. The world's only underwater Stone Age cave The narrow, stone-carved space was completely dry, its walls covered with mysterious prehistoric paintings. But it wasn't until 1991 that he managed to reach the main cave through a tunnel. He and his companions dived down to the entrance of the cave several times over the next few months. When the French diving instructor Henri Cosquer discovered in 1985 the access to a flooded cave at a depth of 37 meters (121 feet), during a diving tour in the Mediterranean off the coast of Marseille, he didn't know that it concealed an archaeological sensation.
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