Trois Frères

Trois Frères is a cave with prehistoric art in Montesquieu-Avantès, southwestern France, extending more than four hundred meters into the limestone. Its walls carry more than three hundred fifty engravings and paintings showing animals and hybrid figures.

Three young men from the Bégouën family found the entrance in 1914 and began exploring inside. Henri Breuil studied the images from 1920 onward and spent nearly two decades documenting them.

The site takes its name from the three brothers who found it, and the walls show engravings where animal bodies merge with human features. These images suggest how Ice Age people recorded their relationship with the animal world on stone.

The cavity forms part of a larger network connected to nearby caves through an underground river passage. Access is granted only in small groups and by prior arrangement to protect the wall art.

A bone fragment from the finds shows an engraved insect figure, the first known depiction of its kind from the Old Stone Age. Researchers believe it represents a grasshopper or cricket.