Around the question

How the Cosquer cave resurfaced?

Audio 48:30

Replica of the Cosquer cave, in Marseille, June 2, 2022. © AP - Daniel Cole

By: Caroline Lachowsky

1 min

Dive into the Cosquer cave, the only decorated underwater cave in the world!

A bubble of time and prehistoric art immersed 37 meters deep in a creek of the Mediterranean...

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Appointment for an extraordinary dive in time and in the depths of the Mediterranean, in the footsteps of a jewel of parietal art, a hidden and immersed treasure of the prehistoric world heritage: the

!

The only decorated underwater cave in the world discovered in 1985 by the diver Henri Cosquer more than 37 meters under the sea at the bottom of a creek between Cassis and Marseille... An inaccessible cavity because it has been submerged for 20,000 years, whose breathtaking beauty reveals a bestiary of more than 5,000 drawings and engravings of penguins, seals, ibexes, megaloceros horses... but also signs and handprints of our adult and child ancestors who adorned and trod the floor of this cave of many times between 33,000 and 20,000 years before our era... until the rising waters of the Mediterranean after the ice age closed its access.

The Cosquer cave is now very difficult to access and threatened with total submersion, hence the idea of ​​reconstructing it identically and in the open air.

The replica of the Cosquer cave in Marseille

 is now open to the public.

With 

, underwater archaeologist and member of the Scientific Committee for the restitution.

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• Archeology

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