Boston Globe

Well off the beaten path in the Aquitaine, Grotte de Pair Non Pair is one of the oldest decorated caves in the world. The walls are covered with carvings of bison, horses, goats, and mammoths dating to 30,000 BC.

Even in prehistoric times, it seems, what made real estate desirable was location, location, location. Our guide emphasized that this out-of-the way cave had a running spring, a natural opening in the roof for smoke to escape, and a hillside perch that hid its occupants from roving marauders. Archeologists believe it was occupied for 60,000 years by Cro-Magnons, Neanderthals, and eventually homo sapiens. It has yielded 15,000 tools and 6,000 bone fragments from 60 animal species

The cave's name was a matter of evolution. At one time the owner of the site was a man named Pernod. Since he had a son by the same name, he was known as Pernod the father, or Pernod pere, a moniker that eventually morphed into Pair-Non-Pair.

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