The idea was to clean up graffiti, but a youth group in southwestern France got carried away and wiped out a bit of prehistory as well, damaging cave paintings thousands of years old.
French cultural officials are furious and say they plan to file a complaint against the group."Absolutely stupid!" fumed Rene Gachet, director of cultural affairs for the Tarn-et-Garonne department, 400 miles southwest of Paris.
The damage was done last Sunday when about 70 members of Eclaireurs de France - a Protestant youth group whose name means "Those Who Show the Way" - descended on the Mayrieres cave near the village of Brunquiel, armed with steel brushes to clean up graffiti.
Southwest France is dotted with hundreds of caves containing paleolithic art, the most famous being the Lascaux caves in the Dordogne region, discovered by schoolchildren in 1941.
Group officials acknowledged Saturday that the youths damaged a portion of the Mayrieres cave's 15,000-year-old bison paintings before realizing what they were. In a statement, they expressed regret but were also "indignant that the actions of well-meaning youths should be called into question."
The head of the caving club that arranged the cleanup blamed officials for failing to designate the site a historic treasure and act to protect it.
"We told them that the cave was in danger, that people were writing on the walls," Thierry Montheillet, whose spelunkers group discovered the paintings 40 years ago, told France-Info radio. "They did absolutely nothing."