World’s Most Ambitious Re-Creation of Prehistoric Cave Art to Open
Designers took 6,000 photos and spent 680 hours laser scanning every crack and crevice of Chauvet's chambers, floor to ceiling.
From the data collected, they created a high-fidelity digital copy of the cave. The scans, at 16 pixels per square millimeter, are so detailed that in many ways they provide a better view than a visitor could experience walking through Chauvet itself. Once the scanning was complete, more than 80 sections of the cave were snipped from the immense file and pieced together virtually, as if they were a 3-D puzzle, to make a smaller, but still impressive, amalgam.
Once these "bones" were in place, another team mounted a metal mesh on them, which was then sprayed with a foam mortar. Next a coat of cement was troweled on, and workers, painters, sculptors, and geologists worked each surface until it precisely matched the original cave's walls. Gaps were left for the limestone panels of artwork that Tosello was puzzling over that fall day in his studio.
Re-creating the experience of the original was paramount, said Clément. The replica's temperature will even match the original cave's. When I entered one finished section, it was difficult to distinguish from the real chamber that I'd been lucky enough to explore earlier the same day. All that work is now drawing to a close. After nearly three years of furious construction, Pont-d'Arc Cave will open on April 25, 2015.
See the full story here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/12/141219-chauvet-paleolithic-cave-art-paintings-france-ancient-culture/