It is one of the greatest and earliest exponents of human creativity. The Altamira Caves, located in the Spanish region of Cantabria, enjoy the privilege of being the first place on the planet where rock art from the Upper Paleolithic period was identified.
Between 36,000 and 13,000 years ago , this 270-kilometer-long natural cave was inhabited by our ancestors who, as if they knew they were going to be discovered millennia later, felt the need to leave a part of them captured in the cold rock: specifically , their way of seeing the world around them, their relationship with nature, and what their mentality was like through these symbolic codes.
We are opening our eyes to art through one of the first great pictorial works of humanity and also one of the richest; It is no coincidence that they call it the Sistine Chapel of Rock Art: this cave cannot be compared to other finds -see Atapuerca- since, although it does not conserve significant fossil or rudimentary remains, it is an expression of rock art in its maximum splendor.
On the ceiling and walls of the cave we mainly find bison, horses and deer, which are the largest illustrations; drawn in black strokes; some red, and many also filled with this reddish tone. The largest representations are between 125 and 170 centimeters, and the detail with which they are depicted humps, fur and hooves has left scientists speechless since their discovery in 1868.
It should be noted that their recognition as prehistoric pictorial works involved a long process, in which fundamental principles of the time were questioned (such as the belief that the first human tribes should not have artistic manifestations). For this reason, this Cave, beyond being an exciting artistic and cultural legacy of the first humans, would be a fundamental stone in the later studies of Prehistory.
World Heritage Site since 1985
Despite the skepticism with which the Altamira discovery was received in its early years, the discovery of other caves with a similar pictorial legacy in the rest of Europe at the beginning of the 20th century allowed its value to be gradually recognized as one of the maximum representations of the creative spirit of man. Thus, the Altamira Cave was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985. In 2008 the name was expanded to “Altamira Cave and Palaeolithic rock art of northern Spain”.
