Cave Paintings

Deep inside the earth, I have been sleeping in the silent, cool dark for a very long time. If you were here, you would hear the soft drip-drip-drip of water echoing in the quiet. I am not just one thing, but many. I am a collection of pictures spread across the cool stone walls of my cave home. When someone brings a flickering torch, my animals seem to wake up and dance in the light. You can see mighty bulls with big horns, horses galloping across the stone, and gentle deer looking right at you. There are also the shapes of hands, placed on the walls like a friendly greeting from long, long ago. Can you guess what I am. I am the Cave Paintings, a storybook on stone waiting to be read.

I was made a very, very long time ago, during what people now call the Stone Age. That was between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, even before the pyramids were built. My creators were amazing and clever people, often called early humans. They didn’t have stores to buy paint or fancy brushes to use. They had to make everything themselves from the world around them. To make colors, they ground up red and yellow rocks called ochre into a fine powder. For black, they used charcoal from the ends of burnt wood. They would mix these colorful powders with a little bit of water or even their own spit to make a thick, sticky paint. Then, they would use their fingers, soft pieces of moss, or maybe even hollow reeds to carefully paint on my stone walls. They painted the animals they saw every day, the ones that were so important to their lives. I live in many places, but one of my most famous homes is the Lascaux cave in France. I was a secret there for thousands of years until four boys and their dog, Robot, accidentally found me on September 12th, 1940. Maybe the artists who made me were telling stories, asking for good luck on a hunt, or holding special ceremonies in the warm glow of their fires.

For thousands of years, I was a hidden secret, tucked away in the darkness. When people finally found me, they were completely amazed. I showed them that people who lived so long ago were artists, just like people are today. I am like a window into a lost world, a world where giant woolly mammoths and huge cave bears roamed the land. I am more than just pretty pictures on a wall. I hold the hopes, the fears, and the stories of the very first people. I remind everyone that the need to create art and share our lives with others is as old as humanity itself. Today, you can't visit some of my oldest rooms because even the breath of visitors can hurt my delicate pictures. But don't worry. People have made perfect copies of my rooms so that everyone can still see me and imagine what it was like back then. I hope I inspire you to draw your own world and tell your own stories, leaving a special message for the future.