September 12, 2017

English Every Day: Prehistoric Cave Paintings

Engramme: Your Daily English Programme #45: Pre-historic Cave Paintings (Listening B2-C1)


Think Before You Listen

Do you know where these paintings can be found? Why are they so important to us?

Source: Flickr.com
Source: Wikimedia.org

Watch and Listen

On September 12, 1940, four teenagers chasing their dog down a valley in the Dordogne region of southwestern France accidentally discovered 20,000 year-old drawings known as "Lascaux Cave Paintings".

Watch This Video about Europe's Cave Art: When is "symbolic thought" estimated to have appeared among modern human species?


Let's Practice

Look at These Extracts from the Video Transcript: Listen again and fill in the blanks with no more than two words from the description1:
mouse over the colored words to see their meaning
1. We've come to Asturias to sample small calcite deposits on top of _________.

2. What's interesting about the date is that we can't tell whether the paintings were painted by Neanderthals or by the earliest __________ to arrive in Europe.

3. We don't find them using things that express their ___________ until maybe 100,000 years ago.

4. Neanderthals may have had to reorganize themselves into different social structures in order to ________.

5. Neanderthals needed means of maintaining social cohesion and that could be through new ____________ that required the painting of caves among other things.

6. We're also interested in whether human symbolic behavior dates back to the point at which we start looking like humans, in which our __________ look like they do today.

7. Elsewhere in Spain, we'll find evidence for Neanderthal use of pigment, perhaps as _____________, make-up if you like.

(click here to compare your answers)

Over to You

Would you like to learn more about the Lascaux Cave Paintings and other similar ones? This link provides detailed descriptions, photos and videos of these earliest works of art.

Well Done! We hope that you enjoyed this lesson and that it helped further improve your listening ability in English. Practicing these and similar lessons on a daily basis can greatly enhance your English proficiency in a relatively short time ;)

Practice the Vocabulary from this post HERE

Teachers can Download a Print-Friendly Copy for their classroom use HERE

1 In some examinations, such as the IELTS exam, you are required to fill in gaps with a stated number of words. So, for example, 'no more than two words' means you can write one or a maximum of two words. If you write more (let's say 3 words), your answer, even if correct, will be considered unacceptable.

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