In 1985, the diver Anri Cosquet near Cape Morgesu in the vicinity of Marseille at a depth of 37 meters found a narrow passage in the rock. Then he had no idea what an important discovery he still had to make. For six years, the submariner explored the tunnel, slowly and carefully moving along it deep into the rock.
As a result, he reached a cave, the walls of which were decorated with rock paintings. It turned out that the oldest drawings were made about 29 thousand years ago. Among them - 65 handprints, which lack the phalanges of some fingers.
Now the entrance to the underwater cave is located at a depth of almost 40 meters. But this is easily explained by the rise in the level of the Mediterranean Sea during the Paleolithic - due to the melting of glaciers. To get to the cave, you need to swim 175 meters of an underwater tunnel that goes up. The diver Anri Cosquet had to spend six long years to overcome this distance. And only in 1991 he was finally able to get into the cave.
The underwater hall, unlike the tunnel, is located above sea level and is only slightly flooded with water. On the walls of this hall, the diver saw a large number of images, some of them were painted, and some were scribbled.
Among the images, animals were most often found: horses, bison, deer, mountain goats, various representatives of felines, seals and penguins. As a rule, all animals are drawn with large bellies and disproportionately thin limbs. The most unusual of all are the images of an unknown creature that were found in the northern part of the cave hall. These creatures, judging by the drawings, had round bodies, small heads and either paws or wings sticking out to the sides.
Scientists who examined the ancient rock paintings of the underwater cave could not answer unequivocally for a long time - who exactly the ancients drew: turtles, penguins or dinosaurs. In the end, everyone agreed that it was a wingless auk, now exterminated. Although back in the 19th century, she met in Europe and in its appearance really resembled a penguin - she could not fly and spent more time in the water than on land.
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All drawings are made in a contour style, mostly in black, less often in brown paint. Some of the images are carved into the rock surface. The researchers found that the paint was applied with a brush made of tubular bone, with a tuft of wool attached to the tip. The paint was most likely made from animal fat and natural dyes such as chalk, ocher, and coal.
However, most of the oldest drawings of the Koske Cave are human handprints. The estimated age of these prints is about 28-29 thousand years. They were found in the eastern part of the cave. Scientists suggest that through these prints, ancient people showed the way from the entrance to the large shaft of the cave.
How exactly these images were drawn is still not known for sure. There are two options: dipping your hand in paint and applying it to the wall surface, or putting a clean hand on the wall and sprinkling paint around it.
But all prints have one recurring oddity: they lack the phalanges of the fingers - sometimes all but the thumb. Scientists still cannot solve this riddle. At first, it was assumed that the absence of the phalanges of the fingers was quite understandable - primitive people could lose fingers due to wounds, gangrene, frostbite or while hunting. But then why is the thumb invariably present in all drawings?