La Marche is a cave and archaeological site located in Lussac-les-Châteaux, a commune in the department of Vienne, western France.

[2] In addition to La Marche, several other important cave sites from the Paleolithic period have been discovered in France including those at Lascaux, Niaux, Trois Frères, Font-de-Gaume and Les Combarelles, Chauvet, Cosquer, Cussac, and Rouffignac.

[2] The artwork found in La Marche is specifically from the middle Magdalenian period, dating to approximately 14,000 or 15,000 years before the current era (BCE).

[2] Factors that made La Marche an ideal archaeological site for artwork include its usefulness as a shelter to prehistoric humans, the cultural preferences of these early people, and its relatively good preservation.

[4] Many people questioned the validity of these findings, however, stating that they made that judgment because the paintings closely resembled modern art.

Dr. Rappenglueck suggests that a detailed study of the cave floors may bring to light pieces of the puzzle advancing the credibility of Péricard's original discovery.

[2] When French scientist Léon Péricard excavated La Marche between 1937 and 1942, he catalogued more than 1,500 slabs of limestone that had been placed carefully on the floor.

The content of these etchings include animals, such as lions and bears, along with 155 depictions of humans, clad in robes and boots, each with their own well-defined faces.

[5] This style made the engravings hard to isolate and decipher when they were first discovered in 1937 and also added to the doubt of the site's authenticity.

Although this does not coincide with the previously accepted view of prehistoric people, it may be because paintings depicting clothed humans were destroyed in the other caves while scientists were studying the walls.

One constellation on La Marche's floor, the Pleiades, has been found engraved on the walls of Neolithic caves, but rarely on those of the Paleolithic.

Dr. Rappenglueck has suggested that these pits might have been filled with animal fat and set on fire to replicate the stars in the sky.

[2] Péricard and Lwoff were the main contributors to the discovery and created the original documents concerning the findings at La Marche.

[3] At the same time, the French Prehistoric Society supported the findings at La Marche and attested to the authenticity of the paintings even if some of the details were questionable.

In particular, an engraved reindeer antler from La Marche has provided proof that more sophisticated systems of symbols existed during the Paleolithic period than once believed.

[7] Francesco d'Errico, an archaeologist who analyzed the antler, sees it as proof that humans at this time had “artificial memory systems,” that enabled them to record various groupings of information.

This recent debate between archaeologists may be seen as even further proof that scientific opinion is increasingly favoring La Marche as an authentic site.