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Sunday 9 February 2014

Cave

On September 12, 1940, the entrance to Lascaux Cave in southwestern France was discovered by 18-year-old Marcel Ravidat. Ravidat returned to the scene with three friends, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel, and Simon Coencas, and entered the cave via a long shaft. The teenagers discovered that the cave walls were covered with paintings of animals, which were later estimated by experts to be 17,300 years old.

Cave painting of Aurochs, horses, and deer at Lascaux By Prof saxx Wikipedia

For years, scientists didn't know what caused mysterious cave networks in South America. In 2010, they learned that the caves were actually tunnels dug by ancient giant sloths.

The Cave of Swallows in Aquismón, San Luis Potosí, Mexico is the largest known cave shaft in the world. The floor of the cave is a 1092 feet (333-meter)) freefall drop from the lowest side of the opening, with a 370-meter (1,214 ft) drop from the highest side. The first documented exploration was on December 27, 1966 by T. R. Evans, Charles Borland and Randy Sterns.


With 405 miles of surveyed passageways Mammoth Cave in Kentucky's Mammoth Cave National Park is by far the world's longest known cave system.

Movile Cave is a cave near Mangalia, Constanța County, Romania discovered by Cristian Lascu in 1986 a few kilometers from the Black Sea coast.  Life in the cave had been sealed off from the outside world for the past 5.5 million years and it is based completely on chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis. The atmosphere deep in the cave it like an alien planet, and to date over 69 unique species of flora and fauna have been discovered.

Up to 40 million people in China still live in caves. Called yaodong, many have electricity and running water.

More people actually live in caves now than during the Stone Age.


Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

Sơn Đoòng Cave in Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng National Park, Vietnam is the biggest known cave in the world. 30,000 foot long, it’s so big that it has its own river, jungle and climate.

At 2,212 meters (7,257 ft) deep,Veryovkina Cave in Abkhazia, Georgia is the deepest-known cave on Earth. Since 1982, a team known as "Perovo-speleo" has been researching and going deeper and deeper. In 2021, at a depth of  (1100m(3,600 ft), they found the body of a tourist.

In India there are 29 caves joined together which are filled with paintings from the Buddhist, Hindu  and Jainism religions. They were constructed in 520 BC and have a size of 8,242 ha, making it one of the largest man-made cave structures ever built.

Cooper Pedy is an Australian town that lies in the outback 850 kilometres north of Adelaide. Temperatures soar to between 35 and 45 degrees in the shade in summer sending more than half of its population of 4000 underground to live in caves carved underground to stay away from the heat.

The Legend of Zelda franchise was inspired by creator Shigeru Miyamoto's childhood fascination with exploring caves.

The first use of the term "man cave" is attributed to the 1993 publication, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.

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