In December 1994, three explorers squeezed through a crack in a limestone cliff in southeastern France and stood up inside an untouched Ice Age art gallery. This episode explores the Chauvet Cave, sealed by a cliff collapse 29,000 years ago that preserved cave bear hibernation hollows, fossilized skulls, torch swipes on the walls, and a child's footprint from roughly 25,000 years ago that may be the oldest accurately dated human footprint in existence.

We look at why the art itself caused a crisis in archaeology: over thirteen species dominated by cave lions, leopards, hyenas, and woolly rhinos rather than prey animals, a debated bison-woman composite figure, red ochre hand stencils sprayed from the mouth, a possible volcano, walls scraped clean as canvases, 3D shading etched into limestone, and overlapping legs that animate under flickerin ...