I've visited several caves this summer (Lascaux, Combarelles, Font-de-Gaume, Rouffignac, and a couple others) and there is a constant: the artists weren't amate

I've visited several caves this summer (Lascaux, Combarelles, Font-de-Gaume, Rouffignac, and a couple others) and there is a constant: the artists weren't amateurs, they were extremely skilled. First, in many places it was impossible at the time to see the entirety of the drawing at a glance because of the very low height, or the wall curvature, but the proportions are right anyway (most visited caves have been dug out; back then you had to crawl for hundreds of meters in pitch darkness to reach the drawings). Similarly, the animals are drawn with a very high anatomical precision. Even animals that didn't exist locally, like mammoths (which mean that the artist had seen mammoths earlier, very far away).