Pech Merle mysterious Paleolithic cave in France

Pech Merle mysterious Paleolithic cave in France. Dated 30,000 -12,000 BC. Mysterious images on one ancient petroglyph look like UFO discs. Pech Merle is one of the few prehistoric cave painting sites in France which remain open to the general public. Extending for more than a mile from the entrance are caverns the walls of which are painted with dramatic murals dating from the Gravettian culture (some 25 000 years BC Some of the paintings and engravings, however, could date from the later Magdalenian era (16 000 years BC). This area once had a great river flowing through it, cutting underground channels which were later used by humans for shelter and eventually for mural painting. The walls of seven of the chambers at Pech Merle have fresh, lifelike images of a woolly mammoth, spotted horses, bovids, reindeer, handprints, and some human figures. Footprints of children, preserved in what was once clay, have been found more than a kilometre underground. Within a ten kilometre radius of the site are ten other caves with prehistoric art of the Upper Palaeolithic period, but none of these are open to the public. During the Ice Age the caves were very probably used as places of refuge by prehistoric peoples when the area had an Arctic climate, very cold temperatures, and native animal species very different from those of the present day. It is supposed that, at some point in the past, mudslides covered the cave entrances providing an airtight seal until the 20th century. The cave at Pech Merle has been open to the public since 1926.