UNESCO adds French cave art to world heritage list

PARIS (AP) — Drawings of mammoths, human footprints and other art carved on cave walls in southern France about 30,000 years ago have been inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage list.

The U.N. cultural agency says that the Decorated Cave of Pont d’Arc contains the best preserved figurative drawings in the world.

The agency’s World Heritage Committee said in a statement that it added the cave and other sites at a meeting Sunday in Doha.

Experts have recorded more than 1,000 images from the walls of the cave, also known as the Grotte Chauvet-Pont d’Arc.

The drawings, among the oldest known human drawings, were unexpectedly discovered in 1994 by researcher Jean-Marie Chauvet in the Ardeche region.

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