system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How exactly were cave paintings made and how have they stayed in relatively good condition for tens of thousands of years until our time?
gpt
For starters, we wouldn't know of cave paintings that *didn't* make it to modern times. If a cave sweats enough to wash away the paint or some other phenomenon happens that erases the paintings we would never know a specific cave ever had any cave paintings.  

For the paintings that *did* last to modern day, caves are surprisingly well protected from weather patterns. Unless a painting was close to an opening, there's next to no moving water to wash it away, there's very few plants, if any, that can grow (to break apart the pigments), short of a cave collapsing on itself or animals rubbing against it, there isn't that much that will get rid of the paint...so it tends to stick around for a long time.