Altamira

Altamira, cave in northern Spain famous for its magnificent prehistoric paintings and engravings. It is situated 19 miles (30 km) west of the port city of Santander, in Cantabria provincia. Altamira was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985.

The cave, discovered by a hunter in 1868, was visited in 1876 by Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, a local nobleman. He returned in 1879 to excavate the floor of the cave’s entrance chamber, unearthing animal bones and stone tools. On one visit in the late summer, he was accompanied by his eight-year-old daughter, Maria, who first noticed the paintings of bison on the ceiling of a side chamber. Convinced of the antiquity of the paintings and the objects, Sanz de Sautuola published descriptions of his finds in 1880. Most prehistorians of the time, however, dismissed the paintings as modern forgeries, and it was not until the end of the 19th century that they were accepted as genuine.

The Altamira cave is 971 feet (296 metres) long. In the vestibule numerous archaeological remains from two main Paleolithic occupations—the Solutrean (about 21,000 to 17,000 years ago) and the Magdalenian (about 17,000 to 11,000 years ago)—were found. Included among these remains were some engraved animal shoulder blades, one of which has been directly dated by radiocarbon to 14,480 years ago. The lateral chamber, which contains most of the paintings, measures about 60 by 30 feet (18 by 9 metres), the height of the vault varying from 3.8 to 8.7 feet (1.2 to 2.7 metres); the artists working there were thus usually crouched and working above their heads, never seeing the whole ceiling at once. The roof of the chamber is covered with paintings and engravings, often in combination—for example, the bison figures that dominate were first engraved and then painted. These images were executed in a vivid bichrome of red and black, and some also have violet tones. Other featured animals include horses and a doe (8.2 feet [2.5 metres] long, the biggest figure on the ceiling), as well as other creatures rendered in a simpler style. Numerous additional engravings in this chamber include eight anthropomorphic figures, some handprints, and hand stencils. The other galleries of the cave contain a variety of black-painted and engraved figures. In many cases the creator of the images exploited the natural contours of the rock surface to add a three-dimensional quality to the work.

The black paint used in the drawings was determined to be composed largely of charcoal, which can be radiocarbon dated. By the turn of the 21st century, this method had been applied to several images on the Altamira ceiling. Scientists now believe the ceiling paintings date from c. 14,820 to 13,130 years ago. In July 2001 an exact facsimile of the cave’s decorated chamber, entrance chamber, and long-collapsed mouth was opened to the public at the site.