Way back in 1912, in southwestern France, three brothers started to explore the caves near their house.

They built this little homemade boat and they rode it deep into these underground caves.

It was dark down there, so they brought lanterns and they would hold them up and watch the light bouncing around the caves.

They saw stalactites dripping from the ceiling

and stalagmites coming out of the water. But then one day they saw a passageway. So they got out of the

boat and they started exploring on foot, squeezing their way deeper and deeper into this cave.

And that's when they really started seeing things.

The walls are covered in rock art carvings.

A lot of reindeer, bison, buffalo.

There's also like an enormous phallus, which is really interesting.

But then this figure floats above all of the rest of them.

In this room that is filled with art, it's actually the only thing that is painted.

Everything else is carved into the wall.

It's like a stalking figure, kind of like a human, but it has like an owl face, it has like animal paws.

It might have antlers.

It's kind of hard to make out.

But it's this weird animal-human hybrid.

So in French, it's sometimes called le chaman, or the sociere.

That's the shaman or the sorcerer.

It's been taken as evidence of ancient shamanism,

what is often claimed to be a paleolithic

depiction of a shaman.

...