France. Lot. Cabrerets. Pech Merle is a cave which opens onto a hillside in the Occitania region in France, east of Cahors. The caves and caverns were originally created by rivers rushing through the rocks. Pech Merle is one of the few prehistoric cave painting sites in France that remain open to the general public. Extending for more than a mile from the entrance are caverns, the walls of which are painted with dramatic murals dating from the Gravettian culture - about 25,000 years BC. Some of the paintings and engravings, however, may date from the later Magdalenian era - 16,000 years BC. Shown here are stalactites formed from mineral deposits over millennia. The steady deposits over thousands of years have created wonderful columns and this stack of fringed pancake stalactites. 2016