the most ancient examples of art found in caves throughout europe served to
Cave painting The earliest known European figurative cave paintings are those of Chauvet Cave in France. These paintings date to earlier than 30,000 BCE (Upper Paleolithic) according to radiocarbon dating.[7] Some researchers believe the drawings are too advanced for this era and question this age.[8] However, more than 80 radiocarbon dates had been obtained by 2011, with samples taken from torch marks and from the paintings themselves, as well as from animal bones and charcoal found on the cave floor. The radiocarbon dates from these samples show that there were two periods of creation in Chauvet: 35,000 years ago and 30,000 years ago. One of the surprises was that many of the paintings were modified repeatedly over thousands of years, possibly explaining the confusion about finer paintings that seemed to date earlier than cruder ones.[9]  In 2009, cavers discovered drawings in Coliboaia Cave in Romania, stylistically comparable to those at Chauvet.[10] An initial dating puts the age of an image in the same range as Chauvet: about 32,000 years old.[11]