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But it will take months before the courts can unravel the plot twists in this Paleolithic soap opera. Individuals introduced as the owners of the land where the cave is located, for example, turned out not to have title to the caverns, as they merely owned the path leading to the entrance. Under French law a person who owns land also owns what is underneath it, unless it's a coal or oil deposit. Thus the true owners turned out to be not the Coulange family, who made the initial claim, but three separate individuals, Pierre Peschier, Sully Ollier and Henri Helly. That point was no sooner cleared up than the government decided to expropriate the land, paying the owners $6,400 for the 10-hectare site after they appealed the expropriation ruling. The payment of so small a sum came as a rude shock to would-be owners who had hopes of millions from commercial development deals.

With the expropriation issue out of the way, scientists have at long last started the meticulous work of surveying the site, which will include widening openings and installing a footbridge to facilitate study without disturbing animal tracks or bones. Also to protect the finds, the study team, led by Jean Clottes, a specialist in prehistoric archeology, is limited to 15 scientists--including the three discoverers.

That is gratifying to Eliette Brunel, who says that from the start they were prepared "to give everything [they] had" to protect a discovery they regard as a heritage of all humanity. She decries accusations that they were in it for the money and says their fight was "a moral one"--to refute the official version, which asserts that Chauvet and two "volunteers" were acting on behalf of the state, and to be credited as the independent discoverers of the cave, not tied to the government in any way. While they await the court ruling which could start the long process of correcting the record, Chauvet, Hillaire and Brunel are planning their next visit to the cave, expected at the end of the month. Now, they say, they will be working with professionals whose aims are the same as theirs: to reveal to the world a marvel of art which has been hidden from human eyes for 30,000 years.END