Museums

Painted Cave Replica


The most common museums about caves are replicas of painted cave. That's because painted caves are quite fragile. The paintings, drawn by our Stone Age ancestors, survived up to 40,000 years, and are now in danger to be destroyed during a few years of cave tourism. In this case its not something like vandalism, the breathing of the visitors changes the cave air, the heat of the bodies changes the temperature, plant seeds in the clothes of the visitors start to grow in the light of the electric lamps. The result is total destruction in a few years.

The first success in building artificial caves was made by the Deutsches Museum, Munich, Germany. In the sixties they made the most elaborated replica of Altamira, which was possible at this time. They modelled the ceiling of the cave and painted the surface the same way as the original cave was painted.

The newest technology is based on modern three-dimensional sensors. A laserscanner makes 2.5-dimensional digital models of the caves walls and ceiling, multiple images combined produce a nearly complete three-dimensional model of the surface. Then the surface is photographed completely and the two-dimensional images are then projected onto the digital model. The result is a digital model of the cave. This model can be displayed on regular computers, in virtual rooms (like CAVE) and with VR helmets. And of course it can be used to produce solid models of the cave in any desired size.

This new technology was used to make a model of Grotte Cosquer at the French coast near Marseilles and Karnak in Egypt.