On 12 September 1940, four teenage friends were out walking in the woods near Montignac in the Dordogne, south-west France. When their dog disappeared through a narrow opening in the rock, so the story goes, the four boys followed him, thus making one of the most significant discoveries in history.
The first to enter the cave was 18-year-old Marcel Ravidat. What he found in the huge cavern were more than 600 paintings of animals - stags, bulls, horses, even some mythical creatures, and 1,500 engravings and symbols.
Below, left to right: Archaeologist Henri Breuil, pictured with Jacques Marsal, Marcel Ravidat and Georges Agniel, three of the four boys who discovered the cave drawings in September 1940
Photographs (people) Jerome Chatin, (drawing) Universal History Archive; both Getty Images