Tourists who want to visit France’s Chauvet cave, filled with some of the oldest and best-preserved cave art in the world, will have to view a near-exact replica site instead of it. This faux cave brings up some fascinating questions, such as, is viewing a replica enough and how much does originality matter?
Banning the public from the real site came from lessons learned after Lascaux, a cave near Chauvet discovered in 1940 and opened as a tourist attraction. Tom Scott explains what happened there and the debate about authenticity in tourism.
Get to know more about Chauvet 2 and watch more of Tom Scott’s adventures on YouTube.